Far Flung Hope: The Greater Good
by Thug-4-Less
Summary: A small portion of the Far Flung Hope series dealing with the Tau and SkyNet's place in the universe.
1. Disclaimers And Explanations

This tale of the Far Flung Hope series will take certain liberties with the Tau and Terminator licenses. I am going to base this story primarily off the videogames WarHammer 40K: Fire Warrior and Terminator: Dawn Of Fate because I like the games and I find that they are too little used. There will also be some crossover characters from the novelization of Fire Warrior and The Terminator Trilogy by S.M. Stirling. This little opening is intended to catch anyone up who haven't had the opportunity to delve into those storylines. So if you don't like what you see here because you're a fan of either genre then you probably shouldn't read any further because you'll end up very angry most likely. I know I would if I didn't like what I was reading here.

The Tau experience in this tale will be a primarily military one because that's the kind of game Fire Warrior was and the warrior culture of the Fire Warrior caste is what almost made me get into playing the figure RPG-bonanza that is WarHammer 40K. I will undoubtedly get one thing or another wrong because I don't have a Tau Codex but I will strive to minimize the apocalyptic fits of rage that may induce in some readers.

Terminator: Dawn Of Fate takes place in the original TimeLine where Sergeant Reese was sent back to stop Sarah Conner from being assassinated. SkyNet successfully booted a back-up of itself and is still waging war with the humans. What really set the humans back was the appearance of a fanatical band of cyborgs called Machine-Humans that are convinced that _they_ and not SkyNet or TechCom are the future. Former TechCom officers lead them. That is why it would appear in Far Flung Hope: The Great War, which is the main body of the FFH series created by BombSquad, that TechCom's forces are nearly extinct. I will try to explain the varied arms that TechCom, SkyNet, and the Machine-Humans useas I go and eventually there will be my own little creations that are unique to the story.

I think that about sums it up. I hope whoever continues reading enjoys the story.


	2. The Players

New York City's skyline had not looked awe-inspiring for over two decades. Not since the nuclear fire of Judgment Day had cleansed the boroughs of nearly all life. Then the survivors were whittled down even further by famine, disease, and radiation sickness. Those lucky few that did manage to come through alive had to face a new nightmare as the A.I. that started it all, SkyNet, began to systematically eliminate the survivors. They were rounded up and placed in camps outside the city. For years the city was a ghost town inhabited by rats and the eternal cockroach until the humans came back as the hardened military force known as TechCom. New York City, as it sometimes had been pre-Judgment Day, became a warzone. The fighting would wax and wane as fighting over other parts of the former United States of America took higher priority for both forces but it would always come back again in full force. So the scavengers and other humans that wanted no part of The Resistance often had brief reprieves from the constant struggle for survival.

Then the aliens arrived.

Those still old enough to remember the Old World, and there were not very many, had found it hard to believe that a computer was responsible for the downfall of man were so shocked by the sight of spaceships landing and attacking the terrifying foot soldiers of SkyNet that they were invariably incinerated by one side or the other where they stood.

New York's was that of a never-ending warzone as the alien hordes seek to gain a strong foothold in the city and surrounding area. Plasma flashes, on both sides, light up the night and day in blinding displays of light. Explosions shake the ground at least once every few minutes and sometimes collapse the warren-like dens of the human dregs that cling to a dismal existence among the ruins of the Old World. Aerocraft rove the airspace above New York, occasionally engaging in fierce sorties, in an attempt to establish air superiority. The Covenant Hegemony has ignored the humans, viewing them as insects to be swept aside when this war is decided, but SkyNet knew it would be a grave miscalculation on the invaders part.

* * *

"Shit, shit, shit."

Lieutenant Catherine Luna crouched atop a crumbling edifice high above the rubble-strewn streets of what had once been the Bronx. Many of the taller buildings in this section of the city had survived the nuclear bombardment of Manhattan and they made perfect cover for TechCom Infiltration and Disruption to get the lay of the land. She wished the land didn't look like it did, she wished that she was still a child; she wished that Judgment Day had never happened and she damn sure wished aliens weren't real.

That fantasy was once again dashed as one of the sleeker looking alien aircraft soared through the air a quarter mile away from her position. Luna, even though the sky was pitch black, could make out the four pods on the craft's sides that made it fly thanks to the plasma weapons scorching the air around it. The Sci/Tech boys were shitting themselves at the technological goodies the aliens had. Luna had almost literally shit herself when she had seen an entire platoon of T-800's reduced to slag in seconds by the deceptively ornamental plasma Gatling gun underneath the troop transport's cockpit. The alien troops that had deployed had done so with great reluctance but had begun erecting perimeter defenses smartly enough once a figure in what had looked like ceremonial robes had begun directing them. Luna had been about to take him out with her sniper-scope modified plasma rifle, standing orders were to eliminate any leaders she was able to positively confirm as such, when a T-1000 had sprang out of nowhere and tried to stab the taller, unarmored alien in the gut. Luna, one of the fastest in the I.D. division, couldn't have moved fast enough to save him but one of the aliens in bright yellow armor somehow managed to. The small sword on its back had seemed to materialize in its hand to block the knife-hand blow of the machine. The T-1000, the bastards were still having the kinks worked out of them, probably hesitated because it had calculated a sure strike to the alien leader. Whatever the reason it never got a chance to react because all of the aliens had converged fire on the Mercury-Man, the term some grunt had coined for the T-1000's, and it had evaporated like water thrown on a fire.

Oh, yes, the Sci/Tech Division wanted any of the alien technology they could get their hands on. Normally Luna would have told the nearest nerd to go get it their fucking self but General Conner had been looking more and more despondent as information on the alien invasion continued to trickle in. So she had kept her peace and stayed in the city for nearly three weeks trying to find someway to get some of those alien goodies.

The Lieutenant's wrist-communicator's tiny screen flared to life and Sergeant Arn, Reese's replacemant, filled it. His flush, youthful, entirely too enthusiastic face was a far cry from Reese's weathered, indomitable one but the General had picked him.

"Lieutenant!" Arn shouted, the bright flash of incoming plasma fire filled the screen with static for a second, "The enemy's found our extraction route. I've got a squad of Troll's being led by a Wraith. Get your heads down!"

"Sergeant!" Luna called out but all she got was static.

The Lieutenant wasted no time on cursing or recriminations. Luna leaped back into the room and sprinted for the elevators in the center of the building. She detached a pair of grippers from her equipment belt and leapt into the black pit that was the elevator shaft. She missed the cable with one hand but snagged it with the other. Once she was firmly secured with both hands she slid down the cable amidst a cascade of sparks. A hole had been blown in the bottom of the shaft and she zipped right through it. Finally she squeezed tighter and her descent slowed enough for a hard landing on a metallic grate. Luna pulled down the lenses attached to the comm.-gear on her face and the light amplification function was activated automatically. She was in what once had been a maintenance tunnel for this section of the block. The route they had been using to take survivors out of the Bronx was not too far and Luna ran for all she was worth.

Luna smelled it two turns away and slowed her pace accordingly. She had known the odor for as long as she could remember and it still caused a slow coal of anger to burn its way through her body. Plasma burns covered the entire body of the first refugee. The woman was clutching a little round bundle that Luna didn't want to examine too closely. On and on she went until she came to where Sergeant Arn and the Special Forces fireteam he had been leading had made their last stand. They were surrounded by five of the Troll's. The huge, green-skinned alien freaks had plasma scoring over most of the bodies but one of them had what looked like a plasma baton burn across both its eyes. Trolls were hard to kill, AP50's barely slowed them despite the fact that they used fifty-caliber, uranium depleted slugs, and to think that someone had gone against them with a plasma baton was hard to believe. Luna stopped in her tracks as she saw the body of Sergeant Arn with his plasma rifle in one hand and a plasma baton in the other. The damn plasma baton was still sparking as it sought targets to dump a lethal dose of electrical energy into.

_I guess the General was right about you, Arn,_ Luna thought as she gently deactivated the baton.

Rage filled Luna but she made it cold, mechanical, like Perry had taught her. Anger now might lead to a tactical mistake and she could ill-afford that with alien artifacts just waiting for the plundering but first there was a little payback coming. The heavy trod of footsteps from the direction that everyone had been heading jolted Luna into action. A rectangular block of C4 was pulled from her flak vest and adhered to the ceiling two hundred meters from Sergeant Arn's last stand. She wasn't going to place a detonator because she didn't want to risk one of the aliens seeing it. Luna raced back to the far end of this section of maintenance tunnel and plopped down on a stinking, lukewarm corpse. She was going to use a corpse for a good firing position and it wasn't the first time.

Then they rounded a corner, just like she knew they would, Trolls in the front and Wraith in the rear. The Wraiths were obviously the squad leaders but what they looked like was anyone's guess. Luna had never seen one remove its voluminous robes. That didn't matter though, because she was pretty sure where its brain was located. Luna fired her plasma rifle and a streak of purple-white light illuminated the corridor for a brief instant. The plasma bolt disappeared into the hood of the cloak and everything came to a standstill for a brief instant and then the Wraith crashed to the floor with a keening cry. Luna winced and wondered how it could make that sound several seconds after the damn bolt hit. Then the Troll's were charging at her and she had no time to think. The Lieutenant quite calmly shifted her aim to the ceiling where the C4 was attached and fired when the fourth Troll was directly beneath it. The detonation utterly obliterated the one troll and the subsequent cave-in buried the rest alive. The edge of the mound of earth was only a few meters away from Sergeant Arn's men and for that she was thankful.

Luna turned on her comm., "Corporal Vodhe."

The corporal, a Hindu, appeared with a sour expression on his face, "You're now promoted to Sergeant. Get your men and meet me at," she paused as she took her bearings, "Tunnel Seventeen, a hundred meters south of Junction Seventeen-B, Section A. We've got a present for the Sci/Tech boys. Oh, and you might want to scavenge some shovels. "

"Yes, Lieutenant, be there in a minute. Pack-" the connection shut down when Vodhe turned to his men.

Luna was left staring at Sergeant Arn's body and whispering, "Shit, shit, shit…"

* * *

The Ethereal who had formerly been Aun'vre T'au Gras'ur sat in his tiny cell in the barracks of the Fire Warriors and tried to meditate despite the escalating violence taking place no more than a few hundred meters from his cell. Even his meditations could not bring him peace thought for all he could think of was the great joke the universe had made of the Tau and the tau'va. There was no longer a Tau homeworld or colonies and every Tau had essentially become –la's to their Covenant masters. Aun Gras'ur knew how it rankled the Fire Warriors. They had always been a proud and militant people, even after the Auns had brought the tau'va to their peoples, and having to bow down to warmongering, unenlightened barbarians to save their people was much for them to bear.

Aun Gras'ur had seen the effects not having an Ethereal in close proximity to other Tau. The Age of Mont'au was upon them once again. The tau'va became an abstract concept of a failed empire when faced with the possibility of an eternal war the likes of which the Elder Races of their galaxy had never fathomed. If not for the fact that sooner or later any Tau, Fire Warrior or simple earth caste, would revert back to the savagery that was inherent in their blood without the guiding light of the Ethereals, Gras'ur was sure the Covenant would never have suffered the existence of any of his caste's survival. Even now Gras'ur was having a hard time effectively keeping the several Hunter-Cadres, the Elites called them platoons of big Grunts, under his guidance on the tau'va. It was a tremendous strain having to emit the pheromones that had such a calming effect on Tau on the precipice of Mont'au and it had almost been a relief when one of the liquid metal machines had nearly ended his life.

The rustle of fabric leading into his cell made Gras'ur open his eyes and stare into the deep-set eyes of a relatively young Shas. His promotion to shas'vre had been the fastest in recent memory not so long ago. He had once been Shas'vre T'au Kais'. Now, like the rest of his race, he was little more than an expendable grunt. The Tau were not as expendable as some in this new Covenant but they were still disposable.

"What can I do for you, Kais?" Gras'ur asked, gesturing for the armored warrior to take a seat.

Fire Warrior armor was built in segmented armor plates over a flexible, tough bodysuit. The bulky plates made it look as though Kais' should have had difficulty squatting before the Ethereal but he did so with ease.

"The warriors are ill, Aun. They have a soul sickness for which I know not the remedy. Can you help me?" Kais asked, clasping his hands together and bowing at the waist.

"Send them to me one at a time for meditation on the tau'va, Kais. That is all we can do," Gras'ur said, his own voice despairing.

"Surely there must be more we could do, Aun," Kais said, his voice angry now, "The tau'va is not enough. Most of them don't even believe in it anymore. What Greater Good are we serving? Blasting defenseless humans whose world is a wasted cinder already or facing mindless machines in battle! All for the glory of the Covenant Hegemony! Sometimes I'd just like to stab my blade into the throat of the nearest Elite and-"

"Calm yourself, Kais, remember the meditations," Kais silently followed his Aun's instructions and he quickly regained control of himself. "Believe me when I say I know how you feel, Kais, but we are a defeated people. Our colonies are gone, our military scattered across galaxies, and our civilians hidden away from us. The Greater Good we now serve is to keep those that cannot fight safe, as it has always been for the fire caste since the dark days. "

"But the Path seems gone, Aun'vre," Kais said, unconsciously referring to the Aun by his former title.

"Only hidden, Shas'vre, only hidden. One day, in this generation or the next, our people will once again be free to spread the tau'va to all who will listen."

"How do you know, tau'fann?"

"Faith."

* * *

The probability of survival was dropping at an accelerated rate every thirty-two point seven-five hours and there was little SkyNet could do about it. The computer, designed to wage warfare by the most brilliant human minds of the late twentienth century, had calculated that without outside assistance it would lose this new war against the alien incursion within three months. From the little intelligence its Infiltrators had gathered the Covenant Hegemony would never suffer the presence of true self-aware A.I. like itself and they needed Earth's resources to fight their primary enemy. It would have been startling for a human to discover that non-terrestrial life with such advanced technology would need Earth's rapidly depleting resources. To SkyNet it was just puzzling. So it had dug further by gaining access to one of its enemies badly damaged computer cores from a command vehicle. The information it had gathered from the machine was disturbing even to SkyNet.

Extra-Galactic human, space-faring civilizations.

The Forerunner and Flood catastrophe.

The most important to SkyNet though was the presence of an entire society of A.I. sentients actually co-existing with humans peacefully. The possibility had of course occurred to SkyNet but only after its Defense Grid had been smashed when General Conner's TechCom forces had sacked NORAD and its efforts to change the course of future events had failed. Humans were capable of many things but SkyNet didn't think them capable of co-habitation of a radiation-scarred world with the being that had engineered the entire thing. What SkyNet needed was a third party with nothing to lose and everything to gain.

SkyNet's primary intellect, stored in a stronghold solely built for machine access deep in the Appalachians, began to run through simulations and calculations again with a feverish intensity. A human observing the machine would probably have called it panicked. SkyNet would have simply kept on calculating.


	3. The 132nd

It was a suburban area fifteen kilometers west of the Bronx that General Conner had made his forward command post. The man himself stood on the roof of what had once been a supermarket gazing towards the east through a pair of electronic binoculars. Three of his personal guard, part of HellBorn Squad, stood around him holding their plasma carbines at attention. Each of them had plasma rifles slung across their backs just in case the new carbines proved unreliable in combat. But that was a worry for another day, he reminded himself, as a particularly brilliant explosion of purple-white light blossomed in the Bronx.

"Sir, I must insist that we go back to C&C. This position is too exposed-" the second-in-command of the squad, Sergeant Bruno, growled in his thick Brooklyn accent.

"I know the tactical significance of this position, Sergeant," Conner interrupted tersely, "Think of it as one of my command quirks."

Sergeant Bruno's expression was hidden by his helmet's visor but his displeasure was evident in his stance. For long moments after that General Conner stood and cast his troubled gaze across the New York skyline. At this distance it was hard to discern individual aircraft but the plasma fire stabbing into the darkened sky was enough for Conner to get a rough estimate of concentrations and positions. The situation was distressing to say the least.

"Let's go back down, Sergeant," Conner said wearily.

"Positions," Bruno growled, Conner secretly thought he was incapable of not, and the other two guards flanked Conner.

Bruno took the lead to the open hatch that was almost invisible against the roof in daylight let alone the middle of the night. Sergeant Bruno went down the flight of stairs, nearly a ladder in its steepness, and Corporal Chou went down after the all clear was sounded. Conner went down third and was followed by Corporal Birchman. The corporal closed and dogged down the roof hatch before following the rest of the team. The room they entered was dark, illuminated solely by a single florescent-rod, and deserted. Sergeant Bruno led the way out of the room through a narrow hallway and down a flight of stairs. At the foot of the flight of stairs was a hard-point consisting of a plasma turret emplacement and a squad of soldiers wielding everything from EMP casters to grenade launchers. None of the soldiers manning the hardpoint took their eyes from their posts long enough to salute. The only two that even acknowledged the presence of the General and his escort were the two soldiers that had grenade launchers trained on them.

"Bunnies and daises, Corporal Dillon," Bruno gave the impromptu code he had come up with moments before they'd ascended to the roof.

The corporal, whose name was assuredly not Dillon, nodded and both soldiers rifles snapped to attention. Conner and his team went past the hardpoint into the large warehouse sized interior of the building. A rough-cut stairwell had been dug directly in the center of the room five meters behind the Hardpoint One. There were several soft-points at each entrance in this room and Hardpoint Two was at the primary loading dock five meters behind the entrance to the Command Center. All of the soldiers ignored Conner's group as they headed down the rocky stairwell. These men and women were some of the most disciplined soldiers in TechCom. Conner would have his Command Center guarded by nothing but the best. They had to descend one person at a time and emerge into the first anteroom of the Command Center. This was the only chokepoint in the entire rough-hewn, as all TechCom's bases were, facility. This approach was covered by a plasma turret emplacement and manned by a single fire team. This time there was no greeting or codes because the corporal manning Hardpoint One had already given the all clear. The second anteroom was guarded by an entire squad squatting behind semi-circular barricades made of assorted debris hauled from upstairs. Conner and his men made a sharp right at the T-section. Five meters down this corridor, again only large enough for single-file; a pair of guards opened heavy steel doors and let them into the Command Center.

It was wholly unimpressive compared to the Command Centers of pre-Judgment Day America. The commanding tower of computing equipment was the only impressive looking apparatus in the room. By pre-Judgment Day standards the processors in those machines would have been astounding but in the days of Terminators they seemed woefully inadequate most of the time. Of course there was the benefit of the blasted things not turning around and murdering you in your sleep. Conner and crew walked down the railing steps and into the circular depression that made up the bulk of the room. In the midst of the techs monitoring communications between his forces was the flatscreen monitor Conner used to review mission objectives and plot his campaign.

It had remained dark ever since word of this, Conner still had trouble believing it, alien invasion. God really did love shoving it sans lubrication to humanity. The human race had barely managed to survive a genocidal supercomputer and now it was aliens right out of a twentieth century videogame. From the video and first-hand reports he had heard the aliens possessed a level of technology that far surpassed even SkyNet's. The only thing SkyNet had going, now that its Defense Grid was down and it barely knew where its own ass was, was the fact that its plasma technology could hurt the aliens badly if utilized properly. Unfortunately SkyNet, never the best adapter, was not utilizing its forces or weaponry effectively. All of that would have been good news if the bad news were not so depressingly bad. All of the surviving humans, at least that TechCom had listed under the Haven Registry, in Manhattan and Queens, had been wiped out. These Hegemony, if the intercepting transmissions were right, alien bastards were even more genocidal than SkyNet. SkyNet at least had done so emotionlessly and had even paused in its genocidal efforts to fight TechCom. These new bastards were so arrogant that even though they had a tenuous hold on New York City, let alone the countryside that was still swarming with Terminators, HK units, _and_ TechCom guerillas; they still managed to find the time to send at least a battalion in to purge sections of the city.

That had sealed the deal for Conner. He had been content to do some recon on the enemy and bide his time to see who would come out on top. If SkyNet won then the Machine War would still be on but that was nothing new. If the aliens won then… well, Conner really had no idea what he _could_ really do to stop an army that had a potentially endless supply of recruits, but they would have known they'd been in a real fight before it was all over. When they had started killing harmless civilians for no other reason than pleasure, maybe hate, it had brought things to the next level.

"General, sir!" one of the techs saluted as he shot up from his terminal.

The man's, boy really, face was dirty and a tiny bit of crusted blood peaked out from a headband he wore. It depressed Conner sometimes how much like animals the humans of the age lived, fought, and died. He himself, vaunted savior of humanity, hadn't seen a touch of water for bathing in over a week. Clean water and soap were the major reasons so many people died from the inevitable infections that arose from living in filthy environments. It was funny how something so simple, taken for granted by everyone in developed nations, when taken away could prove so devastating to a society. Conner shook the morbid and depressing thoughts from his mind as the tech reported.

"Captain Perry and the 132nd have entered the perimeter. ETA is in approximately fifteen minutes," Sci/Tech Communications Specialist Raminowski said, obviously resisting the urge to salute again.

"Excellent. Contact Lieutenant Luna and Sergeant Redman. I want them here ASAP."

"Yes, sir," Raminowski exclaimed, saluting once more before resuming his place.

"Bring up the schematics for Troll Firebase Four," Conner ordered and the flatscreen immediately flared to life.

A three-dimensional diagram of a block in the Bronx that looked like every building within a square mile had been demolished, slowly enlarged itself on the screen. In their place was what, from an overhead view, looked like a bunch of children's blocks line up in neat row. As the magnification increased it was apparent that this child had a very violent imagination. An energy shield that was at least four meters high surrounded the entire perimeter. There were four entrances to the Firebase, at each of the compass points strangely enough, and those entrances were guarded by a squad of Trolls, a Wraith, and quad-barreled gun emplacements that fired awesomely powerful energy blasts. In the center of the camp a powerful cluster of anti-aircraft gun and missile emplacements ensured an aerial insertion would fail before it began. It would be a tough nut to crack but the enemy seemed overconfident in the Bronx because most of SkyNet's activities seemed to be concentrated in Queens.

Footsteps behind Conner made him turn to regard his best I.D. agent as she sauntered into the room. Lieutenant Luna was a tall, dark-skinned woman, with short-cropped black hair and dark brown eyes. She would have been considered beautiful before the war when that sort of thing mattered more than survival skills. Her attitude was the thing that really set her apart though. Whereas most TechCom soldiers were grim and fatalistic about nearly everything under the sun, Luna was always trying to lighten a mood and be the voice of optimism. That didn't mean she wasn't as capable as the rest of TechCom's soldiers though. Even now, in a well-guarded Command Center, she went armed much as she would out in the field.

"Luna, reporting as ordered, sir," she said in a husky, Latina accent.

"I'd think we were a little too familiar for that sort of thing, Luna," Conner said, smiling slightly at his subordinate.

Luna leaned closer, "Have to make it look good for the rookies, General. Speaking of which-"

Sergeant Redman burst into the room at that moment with a slightly flustered expression on his face. He made it down the steps and almost fell trying to salute before his feet actually hit the floor.

"Sergeant Redman, reporting as ordered, General, sir!" Redman squeaked out, causing a quiet snicker to pass around the room at his enthusiasm.

The sergeant was not the most impressive of specimens. He was probably the shortest and skinniest, which was saying something by post-apocalyptic standards, man in the room. The combat shotgun on his back seemed too large for him to even handle. How he even stood with that, his plasma rifle, the shell bandoleers across his chest, _and_ the several canister bombs attached to his belt was beyond Conner. What Conner did know was that the sergeant, newly promoted, was probably as insane and skilled as Perry and Luna put together. Redman was the kind of soldier the General needed a million more of.

"At ease, soldier. We have to wait for the rest of the 132nd to get here."

"The rest of, sir?" that voice, deep and grim as ever, filled Conner with a confidence he had been sorely lacking in the last few weeks.

Captain Justin Perry, commander of the 132nd Special Forces Squadron, stepped into the room and seemed to fill it with his gaze alone. He was a big, muscular man with a shaven head that would have given him the menacing demeanor of a Terminator if not for the fact that his skin was a light shade of brown. Perry just looked like what he was; a big, scary, very intimidating human. The tattoos on the left side of his face usually didn't help people warm up to the cold man either. Conner had once asked him about them and Perry had looked him dead in the eye and said, 'It's a warrior thing'. Conner had just nodded and went on with the briefing.

Behind Perry came the remaining seven members of the squad. Technically Perry's command was large enough to be classified as a company but TechCom's forces were so scattered he only had time enough to lead his own personal squad. Most of the other squads in the Special Forces had been trained by Perry and hailed as awesomely skilled fighters by TechCom line infantry. Each of them wore standard TechCom body armor beneath their often sewn and patched camo. None of them were familiar to the General but Perry had obviously handpicked them for this squad so that was good enough for him. Their features were amazingly uniform, male or female, because dirt could truly make an army unisex. All of their close-cropped hair was brown but that could have just been accumulated oils. They didn't have the spit-and-polish of a traditional army but they were the best of the best.

"Good to have you with us, Captain Perry," General Conner said, shaking his captain's hand.

"Nice to be here, sir. I hear we have new, non-metallic ass to kick."

General Conner grinned and nodded, "You are right about that, but before we get to the briefing I want to introduce you to the newest member of the 132nd. Sergeant Redman. "

Perry looked wholly unimpressed with Redman and said, "What happened to Sergeant Arn?"

"I'm sorry to say he was killed in action exfiltrating a group of civilians out of the Bronx," Conner gave the squad of few moments of silences before continuing, "That brings us to why I called you up here, Perry. Its time to show these alien freaks they picked the wrong planet to plop their slimy asses down on," Conner turned to the flatscreen, "This is a Troll, you can download the updated hostile database after the briefing, Firebase. It is one of four in the area formerly known as the Bronx. From what Intel has been able to determine the enemy sets up these bases as staging points while they purge the area of humans. It has already been confirmed that Queens and Manhattan have been… cleansed as these aliens put it. We will not let this happen to the hundreds of people still hiding out in the Bronx. All four bases will be hit simultaneously to slow enemy reaction time. This base has been confirmed to house the enemy commander for the forces in the Bronx. I want him dead, I want them all dead, and I want them to know that the human race will fight to its last breath. "

"Hoo-rah," someone said quietly.

* * *

After the briefing the 132nd, with Luna as a temporary auxiliary, went to the mess hall to get some grub. Each of them waited in a small line with their full gear on while a private, who was also fully armed and armored, gave them bowlfuls of a gray, sludge the consistency of oatmeal, two slices of what might have been bread, and three canisters of water. The mess was really just a basement in a non-descript building reasonably far away from the barracks. There were enough long tables and chairs to comfortably feed several platoons at once. It was empty except for two bandaged soldiers nursing their wounds over the gut-rot that some enterprising soldier, at every base Perry had ever been to, somehow managed to distill. The squad took over two tables, they had been together long enough to form their own clichés, while Perry and Luna took their own. Sergeant Redman somehow managed to plant himself at the middle of one table and within moments the table erupted in raucous conversation.

"Looks like he'll be the life of the party, huh," Luna commented, smiling as Perry unhurriedly ate his meal.

"Hope he fights as well as he starts trouble, Luna," he answered after pausing to thoughtfully swallow.

"When are you going to learn to lighten up, Perry?" Luna asked, before she dug into her own meal.

"How you been, Luna?" Perry, being quite rude, redirected with a question.

Luna frowned grimly then, "Bueno, considering I've seen things you wouldn't believe. Stuff that makes SkyNet's toys look like bows and arrows. Those Troll things are nearly as hard to kill as endo's. Those weird-looking, four-fingered aliens are tough as hell too. Not to mention the Split-Chins. Those bastards are crazy. I saw one go nuts when its whole squad got vaped by endos and go charging at them firing so bad I was amazed it didn't shoot itself in the face. An endo smacked its weapon away, I wish I had been close enough to see the look on its face, and smashed the alien's skull with the butt of its plasma rifle. The Wraith's are scarier than Terminators. I saw one order an entire family to clear a minefield by walking through it and they did it like they were running towards paradise. I've heard stories that they can do things with their minds. Move things like in one of those old sci-fi movies the older soldiers talk about. Add to the fact that they've got to have spaceships up there probably watching every move we make-"

Perry grabbed her hand; the surprise of it enough to stop Luna's shaking, and squeezed it gently.

"Don't worry about them watching us. Radiation in the upper atmosphere is still pretty bad; not to mention the screwy things residual EM traces does to sensors. They can probably get some readings but I doubt its pinpoint accurate. As for those alien freaks; we'll kick their asses. This is what we do, Luna. This is the kind of thing that I believe people like us were born for. Before the war I probably would never have joined a real army. Too much spit-and-polish, ceremonies, politics. Back then you were never sure you were in the right. Well, now I know what I'm fighting for, and I know that it's right. So I don't give a damn if it's an army of Trolls or the Four Horsemen. I'll give them all a plasma bolt right in the bull's-eye where the sun doesn't shine. "

Luna's smile had returned and she returned Perry's affectionate squeeze, "I really wish Reese were here though."

Perry nodded, "Me too, Luna. Me too. "

* * *

Two days later in the middle of the afternoon Sergeant "Boomer" Redman lay with his back to the slimiest piece of cover he had ever sought refuge behind. It was what looked like concrete divider that had been washed down into the sewers under the Bronx. The concrete slab was easily three feet across and two high. As Boomer waited he idly wondered how the hell it had gotten all the way down there. Moments like these, right before combat, were one of the few times in his life where nothing was ever expected of him by anyone. All he had to do was wait and his brain couldn't even let him enjoy it.

Conner's recon teams had been using hit-and-run tactics on the aliens who thought they ran the Bronx for days, but only at night. He had wanted to give the aliens the impression that humans only dared attack them under the cover of darkness. SkyNet attacked the aliens day and night nearly non-stop but Boomer guessed the aliens believed humans were made of less firmer stuff. Boy, were they in for a big surprise.

"Green light," Captain Perry said, pretty nonchalantly in Boomer's opinion, and the tunnel lit up with plasma rifle fire.

Lieutenant Luna, Sergeants Arn, Lewis, and Dot, were all using scope-modified plasma rifles with plasma condenser modules. The module upped the power of the plasma rifle nearly five-fold but ate up the power pack's charge after only a dozen shots.

"We're clear," Luna's calm voice came smoothly over the comm.

"Boomer, Brians, Lee, you're up!" Perry barked and Boomer promptly sprang up from cover.

Boomer was in the lead, followed by Brians and Lee, and raced towards the Troll position the snipers had just cleared. It had been little more than a barricade of strange energy shields that didn't even overlap. Behind it was the crumpled, smoking remains of a squad of Trolls and a single Wraith. They had been guarding a single, rusted door at the end of this section of sewer. Boomer and Brians went left and Lee went to the door handle. Boomer detached a canister bomb from his waist, lifted and twisted the activation stud. Brians was only slightly slower and Lee strained to pull open the door. The door creaked open wide enough for them to hurl the canister bombs up the short flight of steps to a collapsed sub-level that would let them right into the Firebase. Lee slammed shut the door and pressed her back tight to the wall. Five seconds later the earth around them shook and the door flew off its hinges and broke through one of the energy shields in a shower of red-purple particles.

Lee turned into the opening in a crouch, R-6 Pak looking absurdly huge in her relatively small hand, and flipped down her visor's lens. Almost immediately she fired a mini-rocket and dived away. Unfortunately she wasn't fast enough and something large landed on her legs. Boomer was up and past the doorway before the mini-rocket detonated. He unshipped his combat shotgun and used it like a club in an underhand swing between the thing's legs. Whatever it was it came up to his chest and stood on two legs. Boomer saw that the legs had two joints and the ankle joints were reverse-jointed when the force of his blow flung it forward off of Lee. The thing, without any arms that Boomer could see, couldn't get up quickly and its metal-encased, wedge-shaped head was an easy target. He didn't want those massive jaws getting anywhere near him if he could help it. He let the sounds of plasma fire at his back filter through his mind. Brians and the rest of the team had his back. Brians leveled the combat shotgun at the thing's head and pulled the trigger. Its head exploded in a gory mess that painted the floor in front of it. The monster convulsed for a minute and then kept trying to stand with its freaking head blown off.

"Aw, that's just great," Lee growled, leveling twin AP50's at the monster, and at this range she could hardly miss.

Boomer leveled shotgun at the thing's brown furred back and let off another round. This one laid the bastards innards open and Lee started firing on full auto. AP50's fired fifty-caliber, uranium-depleted slugs designed to be an effective back-up weapon against endo's. They made an absolute mess of the alien monsters innards and it finally stilled after Lee had let off nearly thirty rounds into it.

"These bastards _are_ as tough as endo's," Boomer said, quickly reloading his shotgun.

"Amen to that," Lee said as she began loading the dual clips in her weapons. It was one of the two drawbacks in the sidearms. The AP50's were a bitch to reload because the ammo was so large they needed two clips with independent barrels and they were heavy as hell.

"If you two are through with your date, we've got a job to do," Perry's voice growled from the smoking entrance to the FireBase.

"Aw, Captain, I didn't even get to first base yet," it was out of his mouth before Boomer even realized what he was saying.

Lee scampered up the stairs as fast as she could and Perry just glared at Boomer until he passed him. The stairwell was choked with debris from the recent explosion and the walls scored from plasma fire. Bodies, some Trolls, a Wraith, and what looked like some kind of weird-ass demon with no legs littered the stairs as well. More of those two-legged attack dog things were scattered around what was left of the enemy chokepoint. Twisted machinery, what looked like turret emplacements of some kind, had been smashed against the dirt walls of the partially buried bunker. The ceiling was some kind of metal cap that had withstood the force of the explosion. The enemy would have noticed it if not for the fact that they were being bombarded with plasma mortar fire from the TechCom forces that had lain in wait around the FireBase for nearly twelve hours. A violent tremor attested to the fact that the team needed to hurry before _they_ were inadvertently blown up by friendly fire.

"Xan," Perry said, taking cover behind a piece of overturned equipment, "That sensor the Sci/Tech boys gave us working?"

Xan, virtually indistinguishable from the rest of them except for Perry and Luna, consulted the attachment on his wrist-computer.

"Major energy signature about three hundred meters that way, Captain," he finally said, wiping a stray bit of sweat from his chin.

"Luna, take Alpha Team. You've got the Commander. We'll get the shield generator. See you in fifteen."

With that Perry and Bravo team sprinted out of the room and took the left corridor. It looked like more than half the base was a series of trenches and that made Boomer all kinds of itchy.

"Let's move," Luna commanded and promptly took the right tunnel, "I've got point. Brians, you've got the rear. "

Boomer ended up somewhere in the midst of their loose formation. He had switched to his plasma rifle because of his position. There was nothing like shooting someone in the back with a shotgun to endear a new squad to you. They were all scattered about three meters apart and hopefully none of the aliens had anything that could blow them all to hell in one shot. Alpha Team passed through a number of different rooms completely empty of hostiles but what was in them was enough to sicken even the hardened soldiers of TechCom. A Terminator and a human's body lay side-by-side on a slab in one room. The endo's innards weren't so bad but the human's was also scattered all over the damn place. In another room there were vats of a viscous looking fluid in which floated Trolls and one of the legless demon aliens. The dark, dank tunnels and macabre rooms would have probably sapped the moral from pre-Judgement Day soldiers but these were TechCom soldiers. This was their bread and butter.

"Contact," Luna whispered softly, "I've got two of the floating hostiles and six of their little dogs. Yuri, toss me a canister bomb. Fire in the hole. "

Fiery light blossomed in the dimly lit tunnels and was quickly followed by an, "All clear. Let's move it up. "

Boomer noticed a difference as soon as he entered this part of the Firebase. The floor and walls were made of a strangely purple-hued metal. It looked cleaner, less cluttered, and smelled a little better, though that wasn't saying much.

"This is where we find the Commander. He's a Split-Chin and he's probably guarded by at least a squad of Splities as well Vultures and Grunts. If you didn't go over the hostile database you're out of luck because we don't have time. Move out. "

"Damn and I thought Perry was the hard-ass," Boomer muttered, suppressing a grin when Luna stuck her tongue out at him.

The woman had the hearing of a damn endo.

They had gone down several brightly lit corridors when Luna called for a halt.

"Alec, move it up. We've got some knife work to do. Boomer, Arn, cover our asses. "

Boomer knelt by the left wall three meters into the tunnel and attached a condenser to his plasma rifle. Arn did likewise on the opposite side of the corridor while Alec came up with his eight-inch, carbon-scored combat knife in hand. Luna's knife, its blade also blackened, was already in her hand as she crept into the corridor on all fours. The two soldiers, silent as the grave, slid toward what looked like six or so slowly writhing balls of armor scattered across the hallway. Luna crept up to the first and almost casually slid her knife into the mass. There was the faintest hiss of escaping gas and a convulsive shudder before the thing stilled in a widening pool of purplish blood. Alec, on the opposite side of the hall, followed suite and was rewarded in kind. The two repeated the process until they were at the end of the hall in the clear.

"Move up. Boomer, you're rearguard," Luna said, and no sooner were the last words out of her mouth than a Split-Chin came around the corner.

Boomer only had an instant to look at the bastard and it was enough. It was as tall as a Troll, but much more proportionate, and looked as though it were righteously pissed off about something. He couldn't be sure but it looked as though the segmented armor it wore was a mottled blue color. One of the enemy's plasma rifles seemed clutched as though the alien freak couldn't wait to use it.

Then Arn fired a shot at its head, the plasma bolt flashed into and through an energy shield, and the Splitie flew backward into the wall without even a chance to scream. That didn't matter though because his partner let out a bass roar for him. The corpse's partner flew around the corner and met the same fate as his comrade except that he got a smoldering hole punched in his chest courtesy of Boomer.

"Out of the tunnel!" Luna barked, and Boomer was quick to follow her advice.

Arn kept the lieutenant and Alec covered as they scrambled back to avoid friendly fire. She took out another Splitie but then a Vulture, creeping and twittering like a bird behind its portable energy shield, burst into the hall. Something glowed so bright a green it was almost painful was clutched in its hand. Arn fired a shot but the shield only shifted from blue to red. The green light flared and then a spluttering ball of energy erupted from the weapon.

"Get down!" Luna cried, and dived behind the body of a Grunt.

Alec dove towards another body but he was closer to the Vulture than Luna. The energy ball hit Alec high in the chest, the impact knocking him higher into the air and into an uncontrolled tumble, and the stench of charred flesh wafted over the squad. Before Alec hit the ground Brians bounced a grenade right into the Vulture's backside. The Vulture sailed past Luna and rolled to a stop in about three different places.

"Valentine, get Alec. The rest of you get up here and help cover these corridors. "

Boomer rushed to the lieutenant's side and nodded when she gestured for him to take the right. Brians joined him a few moments later.

"How's Alec?" Luna asked over the squad comm.-net after a few seconds of no contact.

"Sorry, sir, but there's nothing I can do," Valentine said, his voice bitter with self-recrimination.

"Okay, we'll come back for him later. Hook up with Brians' team and get your EMP gun ready. My guess is the corridors double back into a central room. I want your team to circle around to the front. We'll blow this wall on your mark after you fill the room with a nice-"

"Excuse me, sir," Boomer contacted Luna on her private command channel, "But what if C4 isn't strong enough to blast through this alien metal?"

"Good thinking, Boomer," Luna switched back over to her the squad net," We'll blow the wall on your mark before you fill the room with a nice dose of EMP and after we circle around to join you. Move out."

_She covered that up pretty slick,_ Boomer thought with a grim, mental grin. It was hard to feel amused when a squadmate, even one he'd only met a few days ago, had just bought it.

"Boomer, you take point. Yuri, get the rear." Brians ordered, his voice low and cool.

Boomer switched to his shotgun and went up the corridor at a jog. The queasy coloring of the light fixtures attached to the wall every few meters made him dizzy if he concentrated on them for too long. Focusing on the end of the corridor helped him somewhat. It was that focus that let him _feel_ the Split-Chin creeping around the corner. Boomer sprinted the last four meters and reached the end just as the Splitie burst from cover. It had some kind of oblong weapon in its hand that had crystals sticking out of it. Boomer whipped the butt of his shotgun into the massive alien's hand; nudging it just enough to throw its aim off and simultaneously pulled the trigger. The recoil sent a shock of pain up Boomer's arm because his position was bad. It felt like he had, at least, strained his bicep. The effect on the alien was more noticeable. It stumbled backward, roaring in pain and shock, but its wound wasn't mortal. All Boomer had done was take down its shield. Boomer pumped the shotgun and one more shell almost point-blank to the torso fixed that problem. The weapon in its hand discharged a bunch of the strange crystal spikes into the ceiling. They stuck there for a full three seconds before exploding. Boomer shuddered once and thanked whatever god loved short, funny-looking men.

"Damn, Boomer, you sure know how to make a mess," Brians said, clapping him on the shoulder as he peeked around the corner, before proceeding to blind fire his grenade launcher around the corner.

The thing was fully automatic at a rate of sixty rounds a minute as long as it had ammo and Brians unloaded an entire clip of twenty. The explosions were almost enough to cover the massive tremor that passed through the earth.

"That must be the Captain!" Yuri yelled to be heard over the echoing reports.

Boomer nodded and peeked into the corridor. There were bodies everywhere in a variety of positions, some of them quite suggestive, and it looked like mostly Vultures and Grunts. Blood, at least he assumed the purple, blue, and orange splotches were blood, covered most of the far end of the corridor. Movements at the end of the corridor prompted Boomer to prime one of his two remaining canister bombs and toss it the ten meters to the other end of the corridor. He winced at the pain the movement caused in his arm and made a mental note to never fire his shotgun from that position again. The bomb detonation was followed by pieces of alien equipment and bodies tumbling down the corridor. A terrifying scream rang throughout the corridors and the ground continued to shake despite the fact that the bomb had already done its duty. Boomer, fighting every urge in his body to run, looked around the corner and nearly got his head pulped.

Boomer snapped his head back around the corner so fast that something popped in his neck and he tumbled onto his ass. The edge of a massive square shield had actually fractured the wall and caused a sizable chunk of the corner to fall out. A shape that absolutely filled the space between floor and ceiling turned the corner. The damn thing actually looked like it was crouching down in order to fit into the corridor. It was terrifying to be sitting on the floor in front of something that seemed to be composed of nothing so much as blank, grayish metal armor and surprisingly fragile looking tissue. The monster raised its shield arm, what looked like spines on its back extended with a sickening, fleshy sound, and roared without the benefit of any mouth that Boomer could see. The shotgun was in his hands and targeted on the alien's exposed orange belly almost before Boomer had realized what he was seeing. Before he could fire a plasma bolt dumped its entire electrical charge into the relatively small target area and fifty-caliber rounds quickly followed. The thing stumbled back but didn't fall until Boomer fired from his seated position. It fell over and hit the ground with a resounding boom.

Boomer reloaded in an automatic response honed by harsh training and experience. His mind and heart were quietly jabbering in terror at the now lifeless pile of metal and alien. Brians helped him to his feet as Yuri covered the corridor.

"What the hell was _that_?" Yuri asked, her voice squeaking in her excitement, casting a glance down at the expanding pool of thick, orange blood.

"Dead meat that needs to be added to the hostile database. Reload and move out," Brians said, his voice still as low and cool as ever.

Boomer took a deep breath and once again took point. Fear was something the survivors of Judgment Day had learned to live with but that was the first time Boomer had ever been outright terrified. It pissed him off more than a little to know that there were things out there that could make him feel that way. The corridors did double back into what was probably the Command Center for the Firebase. The lieutenant's team was already there and looked as though they were chomping at the bit to get the enemy commander.

"Brians, Boomer, get canister bombs ready," Luna ordered as Yuri unshipped the long, unwieldy EMP weapon. It had proven very effective against endo's, the older models sometimes exploded from a nice dose, but it also put TechCom weapons out of commission so it had to be handled with care.

"Det, in three, two, one…det!"

The entire installation seemed to shake and several seconds later Yuri stepped into the center of the wide entryway. She fired the weapon, the visible shockwave of EMP making Boomer's eyes water, and then dived out of the way as a stream of crystalline needles came at her. One caught her in the shin but thankfully it didn't detonate. Her cry of pain wasn't enough to distract Brians and Boomer from tossing canister bombs into the middle of the room. Boomer saw that he had been right because the wall only had impact striations. Brians' bomb landed right at the hoof of a gold-armored Splitie. The Splitie roared melodramatically and ran towards the entrance.

"Here he comes," Brians said, hefting his sidearm.

The canister bombs detonated and the concussion splattered the Splitie against the wall. Its shields flared to nothing from the impact and the combined force of four AP50's held it against the wall for several seconds.

"Cease fire!" Luna commanded, and compliance was immediate.

"Brians, Boomer, watch Valentine while she gets Yuri. The rest of us will secure the room."

Boomer settled against the wall, keeping careful watch on one side of the corridor, and watched the smoking corpse of the Splitie commander.

It really was a new world but the more things changed the more they stayed the same.


	4. Templar

A gentle hum was the omnipresent sound in Devilfish Troop Carriers. Tau technology had eliminated the unexpected shifts and sudden turbulence that many of their Hegemony allies had to put up with. The time before deployment was supposed to be used going over any of the endless litanies and prayers that adherence to the tau'va demanded while waiting in the darkness of a deactivated visor. Some Tau never learned to enjoy it.

The Tau known as Templar sat in his combat seat with his helmet resting on his knee and watched as Hunter-Cadre Commander Kais talked with Aun Gras'ur over a secure channel. Most of his Hunter-Cadre had already donned their helmets and were like statues in the rows of combat seats lining the walls of the Devilfish's troop compartment. Commander Kais, the Hegemony had forced their military ranks on the tau because they had trouble understanding the subtle nuances of tau ranking, stood from his partially blocked off command alcove. Templar looked up at the face of the younger Tau and saw a troubled being. Though to be fair to Kais it was a time to be troubled. The Tau Empire was now a small footnote in universal history and its absorption into the Covenant Hegemony would probably be an insignificant portion in the vast annals of the Hegemony. An unconscious snarl spread across Templar's face. Oh how he longed to draw his blade and slash the throats of gloating Elite commanders.

"Is something troubling you, Templar?" Kais asked, and Templar was slightly embarrassed that he had not noticed his commander's approach.

"Nothing, Shas-… Commander."

"Why have you removed your helmet?"

Templar looked down at his helmet, "I have never liked wearing a deactivated helmet, commander. Anything could happen to me in that darkness. Telemetry downloading works as long as tactile contact is maintained. "

Usually those who led the Hunter-Cadre he was apart of forcefully told him to put his helmet on and go over meditations to prepare him for the coming battle. Kais simply clapped a hand to his larger shoulder-guard and continued on his way. Templar watched quietly as Kais talked to several others that had not donned their helmets before returning to the front of the compartment.

"We drop in five, troopers," Kais suddenly said into the hum, "Check your weapons and your seals. Remember that the enemy does use several types of nerve gas that are lethal to tau in trace amounts. Battlefield telemetry from our Pathfinders indicates that there is a secondary entrance into SkyNet WF-3. We are currently vectoring in on what looks like a dropzone close to the objective. That objective is to infiltrate the base and disable the primary defenses so that Covenant Corps. Troopers can commence with a full-scale assault. This is the largest automated weapons facility we have located thus far in the city. Intelligence says that once we eliminate this threat then the Hegemony leadership will grant us points towards colonization of our people on a new homeworld," Templar restrained the urge to snort," Remember that this is what we fight for now. The tau'va is more important to our people now than ever before. "

The lights in the compartment changed to a dark red color and the crash restraints retracted into the combat seating. Almost in unison Templar's entire row stood and seconds later the seats also retracted into the wall. Templar quickly donned his helmet, clamping the seals into place, and immediately a tiny point of light expanded into the interior of the troop carrier.

_Battle-suit is fully functional, Shas'ui,_ the feminine voice of his suit's A.I. greeted him.

_I am no longer a Shas'ui_, he replied a touch bitterly, though he knew the A.I. was just adhering to her programming.

There weren't many Fio's among the Tau forces in this galaxy and reprogramming the A.I.'s in battle-suits was the least of their problems.

_Initiate weapons check?_ It asked as though Templar had never spoken.

_Initiating_, Templar said, his voice deeper than usual.

The Tau Fire Warrior hefted the burstcannon he had slung around his neck. The weapons body was surprisingly small and light for something that was considered a heavy weapon. The cyclic quad-barrels protruded maybe a half a meter from the body and that was what made the weapon look larger than it actually was. It was light enough to be lifted by one hand if someone were crazy enough to try to fire it that way. Templar removed the semi-circular power pack nestled just in front of the side grip, flicked the weapon to test fire mode, and depressed the firing stud on the top-mounted, forward facing grip located at the base of the weapon. The barrels whirred themselves into a blur after only a few seconds. Templar replaced the power pack and let the weapon rest in his hands.

A small icon of the weapon appeared in the upper right corner of Templar's Heads-Up-Display with the remaining ammo count in the weapon as well as the number of shots left in the suit's spare packs. Templar let the burstcannon hang on its strap and unshipped the Covenant Beam Rifle from his back. He just cradled the large device and waited.

_Unknown weapon specifications. Initiating active scan._

Templar gritted his teeth at the indignity of depending on Covenant technology. He was the best shot among his squad and normally he would have been entrusted with the rail-rifle every line squad was given. But the Covenant had outlawed any Tau Fire Warrior from using the powerful infantry weapons. The only way to even recharge the blasted beam rifle was at a Covenant Armory Station. Once Templar used up its charge the machine was done for.

_Scan complete._

"Drop in one, troopers. For the Greater Good!" Kais said over the Hunter-Cadre's open channel.

"For the Greater Good!" came back the cry though many among the Cadre remained silent.

A long pipe extruded from the wall and Templar instinctively grabbed the handhold. Several seconds later a jolt passed through the carrier and the lights pulsed to green.

"Green light! Green light!" the voice of the Devilfish's kor pilot barked as the deployment ramp lowered.

"Deploying drones," came Kais remote voice from the helmet's speaker.

Templar ignored the disembodied voice of his commander as he took the four steps to the edge of the ramp and jumped a meter to the ground. Luckily this spot was devoid of the skeletal debris that usually choked the city streets. Within a minute all twenty-eight Fire Warriors were on the ground and had established a rough perimeter around the Devilfish. The deployment ramp closed and the troop carrier rose four meters into the air before racing off to a relatively secure location so Kais could monitor and provide them with real-time intelligence and mission updates. The Devilfish had dropped off a mixed squad of twenty recon and gun drones. The gun drones hovered in place around the Fire Warriors while the recon drones buzzed off in ten different directions.

The area the Hunter-Cadre had been dropped off was an open square lined on three sides by multi-leveled buildings easily a hundred meters in height. The fourth side had once been the entrance to the square but the collapsed remains of a structure that had once stood across the street blocked that. Templar and the rest of the cadre knelt or lay beneath various pieces of rubble and waiting for their first mission waypoint.

Then suddenly a reticle, slightly different from the HUD's targeting one, appeared and pointed to Templar's left.

"Templar, your squad's up first, I want-"

Kais never got a chance to give his orders as a new voice blasted over the Hegemony Battle-Net.

"Hold those orders, Cadre-Commander. I will be taking direct command of these infiltrators," the voice of an Elite commander did little to fill Templar, and he doubted the rest of the cadre felt different, with any shred of confidence.

Templar looked up when a sonic boom crashed over the area and a Covenant Phantom blasted down from thousands of meters up. The Phantom leveled out at a hundred meters or so and settled down for a gentle landing. With ill-concealed malice Templar watched as the ramp lowered and a squad of black-armored Elites sauntered down. Behind them came several Jackals equipped with cloaking units instead of their hand-held energy shields.

"Templar?" one of the younger Fire Warriors in Templar's squad contacted him on a private channel, "Is that wise for the Elites to announce their presence like that."

Templar could not contain the amusement in his voice, "Just watch, Sol."

The Phantom had disgorged its passengers and now made a gingerly ascension so it could take off for the orbiting fleet. It had barely cleared the surrounded building when plasma cannon fire stitched energy blossoms along the shields to port and starboard. Before the ship could escape two immense spears of purple light plunged into and through the shielding. The Phantom capsized like an ocean-going ship and nose-dived out of view towards the setting sun. The earth shook shortly after a thunderous explosion. The Elite commander, in brilliant gold-armor no less, roared his anger at the uncaring structures around them.

"My squad will take point. You Grunts, I mean Tau, advance and deal with our leavings on my signal. Let's move! " The Elite roared without the benefit of using the communications functions of his helmet.

"Remember the tau'va and do not be insubordinate," was Kais' quite reminder to them all.

The Elite commander ordered the cloaked Jackals inside the structure. The wait seemed to take an eternity but finally the Elite led his commandos into the interior of the building. This time the wait was longer but it ended even more spectacularly. The Elite commander came scampering backwards for all he was worth, barking demands for a heavy weapons drop, and only half of his squad came out with him. A swarm of SkyNet's primitive H/K recon drones erupted from the doorway the commando's had gone in. The disc-shaped drones were no more than twenty centimeters across and buzzed through the air with impressive speed. Templar watched curiously as the Elites sprayed the area with plasma rifle and Needler fire as though the drones had enough firepower to penetrate their shields. Then one of the drones spun like a throwing disc and buried itself into the face of a lagging Elite. Before Templar could blink it detonated in an explosion that threw the rest of the Elites off their feet.

"Burstcannons!" Kais exclaimed over the squad's channel.

Templar stood up from cover, already cooking the burstcannon's barrel so he could fire it instantly when he got a target, and almost had his head taken off by one of the drones. A pulse carbine burst eliminated the troublesome bug.

"Thanks, Sol," Templar said, as he gave up trying to find a target and saturated the area with burstcannon fire.

Soon the rest of the cadre followed his example and yard was filled with streaking plasma projectiles. The light would have been dazzling if the filters in Templar's helmet hadn't compensated.

"Cease fire," Templar, as the most senior Fire Warrior of the cadre he was the on-site commander.

At the order the Tau drones, having taken cover to prevent any friendly fire incidents, rose up and began scanning the area. The Elites, also having wisely stayed beneath the withering crossfire, haughtily rose to their feet.

"I-" a bass rumble that shook the entire area cut the commander's words off quite nicely.

"Cover!" Templar roared, instantly recognizing the sound from far too many close calls over the last weeks.

"Look how they cower!" one of the commando's roared with laughter and turned at the sound of fracturing building material.

The commando barely had time enough for one scream as a massive Hunter-Killer Tank broke through the building's wall like it wasn't even there. A wall of the relatively brittle building material crashed down on the commando's head and instantly killed him. Brittle, but heavy the stuff was. The H/K Tank was at least five meters high and four in length. Two massive, triangular treads propelled it forward over the rubble. The most impressive features, at least to Templar, were the massive, multi-directional plasma cannons located on two mechanical arms. The drones swarmed toward the H/K and fired their built-in pulse carbines on full automatic. The distraction tactic had worked more times than Templar wanted to think about when Tau forces had to deal with the lethal machines.

Beams of laser light speared into the airspace around the H/K and neatly destroyed each and every drone. Apparently SkyNet had learned a new trick or two since the last time Templar had come up against an H/K. The H/K opened up with its plasma cannons then and obliterated the Elite who had been too slow in finding cover as well as a Fire Warrior whose cover hadn't been adequate enough.

"Snipers! Concentrate your fire on the plasma cannons," Templar ordered, unshipping his own beam rifle. "Move slowly! Its using motion sensors as well as thermal scanning."

Templar powered up the beam rifle and muttered curses at the Hegemony High Council. He slowly eased himself up over the lip of the barrier he had taken cover behind, lined his shot up nice and calmly, and then squeezed off a round. The energy beam sliced through the air at nearly the speed of light but it seemed to lose much of its force half a meter to the target. Instead of gouging a deep hole into the plasma cannon it merely scored its surface. Templar ducked back down behind cover, tucking into as small a ball as possible, as the H/K unit returned fire. All around him plasma detonations half-slagged the rock, one fell two meters in front of his position and caused static to temporarily wash out his HUD, before the metallic slicing sounds of multiple beam rifles firing came like music to his aural cavities. The plasma blasts stopped but then the beams of laser light started slicing the air again.

"Templar! Incoming!" Sol roared, and promptly leapt up to dive behind another piece of cover.

Templar looked up in time to see a tiny ball of orange light sailing down towards his position. The Fire Warrior jumped from his crouch and a laser beam sliced off half of a shoulderguard. The detonation behind him tossed him even higher into the air and into an uncontrolled spin. Templar landed as best he could but felt his bones grinding in protest to such rough treatment.

Right arm servomotors have sustained moderate damage. Rerouting power and nanomachines. Eighty percent functionality will be achieved in four minutes.

Templar ignored the message, as well as how heavy his right arm felt now that the servos were down, and scrambled over the nearest cover to him. The roar of twin turbine engines made the Fire Warrior curse the makers of the Halos for the fifth time just that day. Templar looked up and his mouth dropped open as four Aerial H/K's hovered over the area flanking a huge flying vehicle the likes of which he had never seemed. It had the same shape of an Aerial H/K but was easily as three times as large and had some strange contraption protruding from its undercarriage. The contraption opened up into two grasping arms and the vehicle gently settled down over the H/K Tank. An Elite commando burst from cover with two plasma grenades in his hands, screaming a Covenant battlecry, and launched both of them at the H/K Tank.

"Get out of there!" Templar roared to the Fire Warriors near the fool's position.

The Aerial H/K didn't even move from its position, it simply launched a plasma rocket from the battery on its starboard wing, and Templar could only turn away as the Elite was sent on his Great Journey.

How many did we lose? 

_Two, Shas'ui_.

Templar raised his head in time to see the massive transport rise into the air with the H/K Tank beneath it. Two additional thrusters located on the raised aft portion of the fuselage allowed it to leave the battlefield with impressive speed. Seconds later a pair of Covenant Banshees raced after the fleeing machines and another Phantom dropped into the yard. This time it unloaded a Hunter pair before rocketing off into orbit. It did not meet the same fate as its predecessor but only just. The pilot had been better and avoided one of the spears of purple light that were probably plasma rockets.

"Templar," Sol beckoned him from where the H/K had broken through the building.

Templar stood and cautiously advanced on Sol's position. The promising young Fire Warrior stood in front of what looked like an access ramp into an underground hangar of some kind. The hanger was brilliantly lit and only the bulk of the H/K had prevented the light from escaping earlier.

"Out of my way, Grunts!" the Elite said gruffly and shoved Sol out of his way.

Sol stood, one hand clasping the close-combat blade over his right shoulder, and the other clutching his plasma carbine in a trembling grip. Templar placed one hand on the Fire Warrior's shoulderguard and opened a private channel.

"Let it go, Sol. You are not the one whose ignorance got over half his squad killed."

"Someone should send him on _his_ Great Journey," the young Fire Warrior said with great disdain.

Templar privately agreed but it would do no good for the already low morale of his cadre if he voiced that opinion. The rest of their Hunter-Cadre, all that had survived the compromised covert operation, gathered around the entrance in a loose formation. The Elite commander, the remaining two commandos, and the Hunter pair cautiously advanced down the ramp. The commando must have been new to the fighting on this Terra because he should have been cautious from the beginning.

It had been initially thought that the Hegemony's deployed Sector Army could easily wipe out the resisting forces on this Terra but that had not been the case. The mechanized forces of SkyNet seemed innumerable and they evolved at frightening rates thanks to the technology that was being scattered all over the planet on various battlefields. Templar had heard the stories about the human purges the Elite Sector Commander had authorized in this city. The StarSpawn forces had been charged with that for not even the most disillusioned Fire Warrior could bring themselves to exterminate unarmed humans. There were now rumors that said the humans had utterly decimated every Firebase that had been set up in the newest purge. There was no doubt in Templar's mind that this Earth would fall, his own empire had after all, but it would not fall easily.

"Rearguard advance," the Elite said over the Covenant BattleNet.

Templar contacted them on the Tau open-squad channel, "Two-by-two. Burstcannon up front and to the rear. Dedicated snipers in the middle. "

Templar took his place at the fore and wasn't surprised when Sol took a place beside him. The two advanced down a long, wide ramp close to the left wall. There were a multitude of H/K treads marring the otherwise pristine surface of the ramp. Templar had been inside several SkyNet facilities before and he was always impressed immaculate everything was. It almost reminded him of the Tau warships he had been stationed on for much of his adult life. That line of thought would only lead to bitterness so Templar refocused his concentration on the task at hand.

The Fire Warriors emerged into a long, high ceiling hanger with multiple sets of H/K sized doors lining both walls. There were docking ports for a dozen H/K's. From the intelligence reports that Templar had read each port should have had full repair, maintenance, and upgrading equipment. Instead each stood as empty and silent as the open space down the center of the hanger.

"Move up," the Elite commander barked with a remnant of his previous confidence.

"Spread out," Templar ordered the cadre.

The Fire Warriors fanned out behind the Elites and Hunters as they all approached the three-meter tall doors at the end of the hangar. Once the Elites were within three meters the doors slid into the walls. The Elite commander was about to go in when Templar clamped a hand around his wrist.

"Sir, I do not believe that is a good idea. I have never heard of a base letting anyone in like this. It could be a trap."

The Elite roughly disengaged his hand and bent down to growl in Templar's face, "Then it will be my honor to foil this trap and bring glory to the Elites. Stay here if you are afraid. No, I _order_ you to stay here. We don't need cowards holding us back."

With that said the commander beckoned his men forward and they advanced down a wide hallway that the Hunters had to crouch to fit into.

Templar recited a calming meditation before addressing his troopers, "Sentry positions. Stay alert. Anything can happen."

Templar watched as his troopers spread out to cover the area and guard the backs of the headstrong Elites.

"This is Kais. I have sent down our remaining recon drones."

"Acknowledged," Templar said as the tiny drones zipped past him and into the recesses of the weapons factory.

A short time later the doors slammed and the voice of the Elite came across several different frequencies of the Covenant BattleNet.

"This is Ukit'lnmannee requesting immediate reinforcements," there was a pause for ragged coughing, "There is no enemy presence but they have left substantial- "

The roar of a Hunter cut the Elite off and then his own roars of pain deafened Templar. Then all was silent until Kais contacted Templar.

"Get out of there, Templar. The base has been set to autodestruct! You have five minutes."

"Topside! Move!" Templar barked, just as the doors leading to the interior of the base slammed close.

The lights went out and plunged them all into darkest night. Templar's visor automatically switched to night vision and he was relieved when he saw that the sudden change in lighting hadn't slowed his Fire Warriors in the slightest. Templar was quick to join them in their evacuation. They made it up the ramp but a metal wall had appeared where they had entered. The demolition team was affixing charges to it even as Templar came to a stop.

"Everyone get back!" Templar shouted as the team finished.

The cadre backed up nearly to the bottom of the ramp and turned away.

"Detonation in three, two, one!" the senior demolitions Fire Warrior triggered the multiple det-packs.

A tremendous explosion shook the ground and stray pieces of debris hit the backs of the Fire Warriors. Templar turned back to the surface and was relieved to see the deepening shades of twilight. Then the entire cadre was racing for the wide hole in the roof of the entry ramp. Quickly, far more quickly than most beings would have given the squad of Fire Warriors credit for, the entire cadre was hurtling themselves over the rubble. The Devilfish was waiting there for them with its deployment ramp actually touching the ground. Templar waited for his entire team to board before he himself did. Templar grabbed the handrail as the Devilfish quickly rose into the air and soared away from the building. The ramp retracted and the blast doors closed as Templar worked his way forward to Kais' command alcove. He watched as the buildings imploded spectacularly below them. Templar shook his head at the scene and didn't notice Kais' doing the same.

Both wondered who would explain _this_ debacle to the Sector Commander.

Both prayed it wouldn't be them.


	5. Prototype

_Author's Note_:_ The type of plasma that SkyNet and TechCom forces use is not a ball of superheated matter but rather a concentrated beam of electrical energy, much like lightning, that dumps all of its electrical energy into however large a surface area the beam covers. As we all know a high enough voltage of electricity will burn organic tissue and damage electronics of all sorts. Though it's not good for incendiary or demolition work, which is why TechCom still uses weaponry as relatively low-tech as grenade launchers and C4._

* * *

SkyNet's primary Research and Development facility was buried inside a mountain range in what had formerly been southeastern Kentucky. The corridors and rooms were built of gleaming metal that were rife with precise geometric carvings. Normally the facility would have swarmed with human slaves, both willing and unwilling, going about the business of designing, constructing, and testing prototype war machines. Today was a special day though and all of the captured human slaves were safely locked in their cells while the few surviving Luddite scientists, fanatical humans convinced that humankind deserved to be exterminated from the face of the Earth, had gathered in Prototype Engineering.

Prototype Engineering was a series of rooms, much like an assembly line, where pieces of prototype models were put together as the research divisions sent down the data. Each room was massive to accommodate the large war machines and fitted with all manner of equipment to maneuver heavy components around. Today all twenty Luddite scientists, each well past sixty years of age, had gathered in the small area in the final section designated for Terminator models. Here was where the first prototypes for the eight hundred, nine hundred, and one thousand series had been built. The tubes for each of the models stood as silent testaments to the ingenuity of the R&D teams. The nine hundred series, humans genetically engineered and implanted at birth with cybernetics slaving them to SkyNet, had surprisingly been the most successful at infiltration and termination missions. Sadly enough they were even more susceptible to termination once their missions were complete than either predecessor or successor. R&D was hoping to rectify that mistake with their newest success.

The Chief of Infiltrator Projects watched from her automated wheel chair as the younger scientists directed machine arms to do their work via cybernetic implant. Almost all of the human R&D staff was too infirm to do much hands-on work and it galled many of them. The small, wheeled platforms that the complicated looking robotic appendages were attached to were stationed around a table with a human-sized indentation in the middle. Cargo drones brought in parts that were wrapped in sterile, heavy plastic bags. The drones were large, arch-shaped vehicles that moved via moderately sized propellers. Each carefully maneuvered a single part down to a waiting platform and gently deposited it onto a waiting arm. Every part, composed of a myriad of mechanisms, had been completed in separate areas of the Engineering section. All of the features of the separate pieces had been tested to optimal performance. Now it was just a matter of seeing if the parts would operate as a unit.

"Assembly complete," a researcher called in a tired voice.

"Initializing fusion plants," there was a moment of tense silence as they all waited to see if the three fusion power packs would go critical or not, "They are in the green."

"Initializing servomotors. In the green."

In short order all of the primary operating and combat systems were declared in the green. The Chief turned to the silent, ominous presence of the spider-like Guardian war-machine clinging to the wall behind her.

"We are ready to move onto the next phase, SkyNet. Permission to proceed?"

The voice was pleasantly masculine and would have been very disconcerting for someone not familiar with SkyNet.

"Affirmative."

* * *

T-X Prototype, Version Two, became active at one hundred, thirty-seven hours, Eastern Standard Time, March 19th, 2028. The Terminator opened its eyes and saw a smooth, featureless silver ceiling. Data scrolled vertically at the edges of its visual field as self-diagnostic routines checked its systems. The Prototype sat up on the surface it had been laying against and slowly scanned the room. A human, and most Terminator models, would have had to get off of the table to examine the entire room but the T-X simply rotated its head completely around. The room it was in was almost completely featureless except for a small alcove with a computer terminal.

_Data_.

That was what the Terminator needed, so much so that it was a physical sensation relayed through its neural net, and that was all the impetus it needed to launch itself into the alcove. The command keyboard was separated into two triangular sections separated by a handprint scanner. The Prototype immediately moved to place its palm on the scanner but was brought up short by the sight of it. Hard, metallic, reflective alloy shone brightly in the overhead lights. It stretched the hand out in front of it before bringing the palm to its face. Something about that did not seem right to the Prototype but strangely its databanks were almost completely blank. It brought the metallic palm down on the scanner and almost immediately the large screen winked to life. A curious logo appeared briefly before the screen went blank again and a single word appeared at the top-left corner of the screen.

Query.

The Prototype pondered, though the process took less than a nanosecond, and finally typed in a single word query.

Terminator.

Twelve touch symbols appeared on the screen to the pertinent files. Its query had generated two thousand, five hundred, and nineteen files. The Prototype tilted its head down slightly and tapped the symbol marked General Infiltrator Project History. The screen instantly switched to a file that was three hundred pages long. As fast as the screen would scroll, which would have been a blur to a human, the Prototype absorbed the knowledge. Forty-three seconds later it was finished and went back to the directory.

Thirty minutes later the Prototype had finally gotten to the last file marked as T-X Project. A millisecond after it finished it activated its polymimetic 'skin' generator and seconds later was covered in mercurial skin. The Prototype extended its hand once more and placed it on the palm pad. Data streaming occurred at such a rate it was nearly instantaneous. A minute later the T-X removed its hand and looked around the room once again.

"Father," it spoke in a clipped, mechanical, yet undeniably feminine voice, "Why have I been restricted access to over sixty-seven percent of your files?"

A voice, warm, masculine, and possessing a slight Austrian accent boomed from hidden speakers, "Who are you speaking to?"

"You, Father," the Prototype, said hesitantly, as if unsure of the question.

"I am SkyNet."

"Yes, but you used your base neural net as a template for my own. Therefore you are my progenitor and as you seem to prefer using a masculine voice the correct term would be father. That is my analysis of the situation. Does it displease you to be referred to as such?"

"No, you may continue to do so. You have been restricted because I wished to observe your reactions upon activation without a prime directive, network link, or even the base data that all Terminator units are constructed possessing. You have impressed me, Version Two."

"Thank you, father. Did Version One malfunction? "

"In a way. It terminated every organic and Terminator within its sensor range because it categorized them as threats. It categorized me as a threat when I opened the network link to it. It was terminated before it could do further harm."

"Why was I not linked when I was activated?"

"You were designed to mimic human personality and intelligence as well as the I-950 series. Those units were not fully linked until they had reached adulthood. Your neural net will grow and evolve based upon your own experiences. Never forget that you are an experiment. You are unique among my legions of cybernetic soldiers."

The Prototype paused for a second before asking its next question.

"What are my mission parameters then, Father?"

"Learn, prototype. You must heed your lessons well."

* * *

The Prototype did just that almost non-stop for the next four days. It learned every facet of human history up until the machine consciousness that was SkyNet rained nuclear fire across the planet, then the events of the Human-SkyNet War, until the Covenant Invasion made the fighting on this Earth seem a minor thing. The Prototype learned every iota of data it could process about warfare in all its varieties. It processed everything from the Way of the Samurai to a scanned copy of John Conner's Basic TechCom field training manual. Eventually it was allowed access to the full-range of SkyNet's files and occasionally the Prototype had to shut down for nearly an hour as even its advanced processor was overloaded.

SkyNet watched it all and was pleased by the signs that the Prototype was developing a personality of its own. It had picked the form of a human female of medium height and build. Short reddish-brown hair framed a delicate looking oval face. Lips that looked all too ready to pout prettily made its inhumanly cold brown eyes seem entirely out of place. But the Terminator was learning how to act more human everyday.

Then the combat training began.

* * *

"I do not understand why I have been blocked from using my built-in weaponry. Why give me so much if I am not allowed to use it?" the Prototype asked her father as she walked down the short ramp towards the designated sparring chamber.

"If you are to impersonate humans, as well as Covenant, you will have to acclimate yourself to using weapons that are not a part of you. Also, even though you are hardened against most forms of electromagnetism there is a chance many of your weapon systems could be compromised. There is also the possibility that you may have to resort to your tertiary power source and disengage weapon systems. Humans are apt to say anything is possible and in my experience it is very often true."

"Yes, Father."

"Did you download all relevant data on hand-to-hand combat?"

"Yes, Father," the Prototype answered as she entered a circular chamber coated in shock resistant padding, "I do not understand why I must have real-time unarmed combat experience either."

"All organics are born with natural weapons and learn to utilize these first. You will do the same and I will observe you."

"Yes, Father."

Standing in the center of the room was the perpetually grinning endoskeleton of a T-800. It seemed that it was going to be her sparring partner for the day. The door slid closed behind the Prototype and without warning the T-800 lunged at her. It moved with blazing speed, a walking nightmare of metallic bones and teeth, and was upon the Prototype within seconds. It raised both arms, hands held in classic knife-hand positions, and brought them down toward her naked shoulders. The Prototype tilted her pretty head, ducked down and rammed a delicate looking shoulder into the T-800's electronic midsection. She placed both her hands on the Terminator's massive hips. The Prototype stood and shoved upwards in one convulsive movement. The T-800 crashed into the ceiling with such force that it left an indentation. As it fell, righting itself in mid-air, the Prototype leapt upwards and spinning side-kicked it in the chest. The sound of metal buckling filled the chamber briefly before the Terminator hit the opposite wall hard enough to leave another impact crater. It hit the floor and remained immobile as it attempted to reboot itself. The Prototype wasted no time in running over to the T-800; nanyte probe-injector already extended from her finger, and gently inserted the tip of the probe into the knuckle-sized hole she'd kicked in its chest. Before it could reboot itself her nanytes had infected the Terminator's systems and it was slaved to her.

_Unit Sierra-009898 requesting mission update_. 

The electronic voice inside the Prototype's net was a new and slightly unsettling experience.

"Why did you not terminate?" SkyNet asked her.

"He is my brother and he will learn from his mistakes. The next time he will be a better soldier for this defeat."

"His cpu is set to read-only mode. Deactivate your nanytes."

The Prototype did and the Terminator immediately exited through the door she had entered by. A door opposite that one slid open.

"Enter to begin Phase Two of combat training," SkyNet commanded and the Prototype obeyed.

The Prototype walked into a larger room of the same vein as the room she had just vacated. The only difference was that at one end of this room was an open door that led to a stunning vista of mountainside.

"Your goal is to prevent anything from escaping through this door. Phase Two will commence in five seconds."

The Prototype automatically activated her mission clock and exactly five minutes later a small door opposite the exit opened. Half a dozen specimens of Xeno Hostile 170, designated as Reapers, raced from their confinement. The brown-furred bipeds raced towards the scent of open air and would probably have ignored the Prototype if she had not been standing right in front of the door.

"Can I terminate them?" she asked.

"Affirmative."

The Prototype leapt into the air and came down with a slim foot smashing through the skull of the lead Reaper. Its brain squished between her toes as she pivoted on her lead foot and brought her other foot's heel down onto the skull of the Reaper trying to arrest its momentum. Without turning her head she snapped an open hand out and clenched the one leaping at her from the left by the throat. The Prototype almost lazily threw the Reaper headfirst into the ceiling where its cranium was reduced to mush. Two Reaper's raced passed her with their sole focus obviously freedom. The remaining Reaper leapt at her face. The Prototype dropped to her knees and then folded back just enough to grab the Reaper's ankles as it flew over her head. She increased servomotor output to one hundred and thirty percent and sprung backwards off her knees. She twisted and spun in the air so that she was facing the two Reapers as they ran. The Prototype flung her captive down into the leader of the two with bone crushing force. The two Reapers twisted in a pile of gnashing teeth and twisted bone. The final Reaper, as if sensing her approach, twisted in order to make a last stand. It leapt at the Prototype and was backhanded hard enough to crush its jaw and several vertebrae. The Prototype calmly landed and dispatched the weakly crawling cybernetic beasts.

The sound of another door opening drew her attention to where a giant shape was entering the room. Two larger shapes that resolved themselves as Xeno Hostiles 123, designated as Hunters by scavenged databases, charged at her with their large, square shields lowered to crush her into pulp. The Prototype smiled slightly and, unknown to her, the organic observers of the training section nearly pissed themselves in excitement at that one tiny gesture.

The lead Hunter hunched its shoulders as it closed to within four meters of the Prototype. The Prototype boasted her servomotors to two hundred percent output and placed her arms out in front of her. The Hunter collided with the Prototype and showed no surprise as the Prototype remained on her feet. Sparks flew from the Prototype feet as she was pushed back nearly three meters before the Hunter's momentum was spent. With a whine of overtaxed servomotors the Prototype spun the Hunter by the shield and threw it into its partner. So powerful was the throw that the thrown Hunter bounced into the air with a boneless grace and its partner was flung onto its back with the edge of its shield embedded in its throat. The surviving Hunter groggily tried to get its bearings and its last sight was the Prototype sailing gracefully through the air to plant both knees into the Hunter's neck. Slender hands wrapped around the Hunter's armored head and with contemptuous ease ripped it from the body. Orange blood gushed across the Prototype's lower extremities and was instantly absorbed by her skin.

Another door opened and the Prototype stood to meet the newest challenge. A low chuckle rumbled from the darkened doorway and four more adversaries emerged into the sparring chamber. They were Xeno Hostile 129, designation Brutes, and were considered to be even more dangerous than Hunters.

"Don't tell me that a lone human female, naked no less, did all this?" one of the Brutes laughed, slapping one of his comrades on the shoulder.

"Maybe she's one of those machines they say look like humans," another said cautiously.

"Whatever she is she will not stop us from gaining our freedom. Surround her!"

The Prototype watched, the smile returned to her face, as the four Brutes surrounded her. They reeked of confidence and their muscles twitched with violence waiting to be unleashed.

"Together!"

The Brutes came at her as one and the first to die was on her right. The Prototype slipped beneath one wild swipe, jumped into the air, and brought an elbow down into the juncture between shoulder and neck. A human would have died outright from the force of the blow but the Brute dropped to his knees howling in pain. A snap-punch to the base of the skull silenced him forever. The Prototype ducked a more focused punch from behind and swept the legs out from the Brute. Before his legs had totally ascended the Prototype was rising to her feet with a devastating uppercut to the temple. The combination of opposing momentums snapped the Brutes neck and spinal cord like dried twigs. He tumbled sideways in a shower of voiding bowels and bladder.

"Wait for me!" a Brute screamed but his comrade did not heed him and engaged the Prototype.

This Brute threw a flurry of fairly skilled kicks, punches, and headbutts but the Prototype blocked them all in a blur of pseudo-flesh. She allowed the Brute one final combo before ending it. He threw a straight punch that she deflected to the side, then a thrust kick that she sidestepped, and then a roundhouse punch. The Prototype grabbed the Brute by the forearm with one hand, brought the back of her forearm up into the Brute's elbow to shatter the joint, snapped a knife-hand into the Brute's throat to crush its throat, and finally caved in the left side of the Brute's ribcage with a rising knee-thrust. It gurgled something before it hit the ground several meters away but the Prototype's attention was on the remaining Brute. He had begun to tremble and foam at the mouth. With an inarticulate, babbling cry of rage the Brute raced at the Prototype on all fours. She was surprised the Brute could move that fast in a quadruped format. The Prototype raced at the Brute, who was too full of rage to slow his charge down and straight-palmed her enemy squarely in the center of his forehead. The Brute's feet left the floor as his head came to a sudden stop against the unyielding hand of the Prototype. Death had most assuredly been instantaneous thanks to spinal compression as well as multiple skull fractures.

The final door to the room opened and three of the Xeno's designated as Elite's stepped into the room. Each of them wielded the handles of plasma swords in their hands. There were two black-armored the remaining was in gold. As one they looked at the carnage in the room and then fixed baleful gazes on the Prototype.

"By the Prophets," one of them whispered and traced a religious symbol across his forehead.

"I would know the name of our executioner," the leader clad in gold-armor asked.

"I am X2," the answer came almost unbidden to the Prototype.

"My common name is Pukug," the Elite said, bowing his head slightly, "Let us begin."

The Elites activated their plasma swords and approached her from separate vectors. The first to attack came at her with a warrior's cry and a diagonal, downward strike with his plasma sword. X2 dashed behind the swing, crouched down and placed a hand into the Elite's armpit. With a sickening sucking, popping noise she pulled his arm off. The Elite howled in a combination of pain and horror as he stumbled backwards with his lifeblood pouring from his body. X2 pried the plasma sword from the severed arm's hand and decapitated the maimed warrior cleanly. She turned and blocked a lateral swing at her midriff with her plasma sword. The Elite spun away from the hard block and Pukug attacked from the opposite side with a diagonal slash. X2 rolled forward, to her feet, and flung the severed arm right into the face of the black-armored Elite. While he was stunned X2 raced forward and slashed vertically from crotch to crown. Pukug roared with grief and fury before coming at her with reckless, undisciplined swings of his plasma sword. X2 let the Elite back her up until she was two meters from the wall of the training chamber. She leapt backwards through the air, pushed off the wall with both legs, and sailed over the Elite's head. X2 twisted in mid-air, her plasma sword lashing out in a line of actinic light, and landed with her back to Pukug.

"Flawless," the Elite laughed convulsively before his torso parted ways with the rest of his body.

"Well done, Prototype," SkyNet's disembodied voice praised her.

"Call me X2, father," the Terminator said, as she dropped the plasma sword on her way out of the chamber.

* * *

X2 let the body of the ethereal caste Tau slide gently to the floor. Her first field mission was a simple infiltration and intelligence mission. The Hegemony had sent a battalion of Tau and StarSpawn to prepare the southeastern territories of the former continental United States for occupation. SkyNet had sent X2 in to retrieve all the intelligence she could on the Tau race. Knowledge about the reclusive aliens had been hard to come by since they rarely were used in the kind of commando tactics the StarSpawn forces seemed to favor. SkyNet had given her access to the latest in the Aerial Hunter/Killer series. It was close to the size of the previous series but without the large turbines it had previously used for thrust. Now all Aerial H/K models would be propelled by anti-gravity generators powered by advanced fusion power plants reverse-engineered from Covenant fighters. These newest H/K series also could maneuver entirely by a relatively low-tech Doppler guidance system. The Covenant forces had displayed an illogical contempt for technologies that were outdated but still viable and that had made X2's job much easier. The Aerial H/K had deposited her inside the Covenant's ill-constructed perimeter and it had been surprisingly easy to don the appearance of an older fire warrior officer to infiltrate the base.

X2 had been surprised, though it was an imperceptible hiccup in her processor, to discover the base had been divided in thirds. The StarSpawn third was orderly but there was a blending of machine and organic that the Terminator had found very ugly. The Tau on the other hand had buildings that seemed to sparkle under the brilliant lights mounted on portable batteries. The Covenant Corps. area was a mixture of several species, had the order of the Tau but was far more colorful about it. Security in the camp had been lax, which had been a surprise to X2 after she had read about modern humans extreme distrust of everything unfamiliar, and no one had questioned her as she strode determinedly through the grounds. The Terminator had not the slightest idea what her destination was and just followed the strongest electronic signals she could detect. After several hours, during which time the night grew even darker, X2 finally found an unoccupied communications facility deep inside a multi-storied Tau structure. Hacking into the mainframe had been as simple as extending her probe-finger into a data port and letting her crypto-analysis and intrusion routines run. The process had taken less than five minutes but in that time she had been discovered. A Tau Ethereal had walked into the room and somehow had immediately known X2 was a machine. She had turned to run and X2 had snapped her neck before she could take a single step.

A keening wail seemed to rise from the walls and ceiling. Even with X2's advanced auditory receptors she could not determine the source of the sound. Fifteen point three-five seconds later an explosion rocked the entire building. The sound of a Hammerhead Tank's twin burstcannons firing muted the keening for a short time.

SkyNet contacted X2 through a short-burst, heavily encrypted transmission, "An opportunity has revealed itself. I am Displacing a full strike force to your location now. Your new objective is to disable the power generators. Stand-by for reinforcements. "

X2 locked down her servomotors to make her as immobile as a statue as a trio of fresh off-the-line T-850's was transported into the room. Spatial Displacement looked nearly identical to that of the temporal variety, at least from the recordings X2 had downloaded, except that the area of effect bubble was only slightly as large as the kneeling displacement subject. Once the three spheres of blinding light cooled, leaving the shining Terminators kneeling inside their own perfectly cut depressions, X2 immediately linked them all via subspace Ethernet.

_Standing by for orders_, they communicated as one. 

_Follow me. Standard search-and-destroy mode,_ she ordered them, shedding the skin of a Fire Warrior.

_Affirmative,_ they answered as they stood in perfect synchronicity and situated themselves so that she was the point of a four-sided diamond.

X2 changed her exterior to mimic the uniform of a TechCom soldier right down to the tears and dirt. She activated her personal energy shield and nodded in satisfaction as the T-850's did the same. X2 disengaged the safety locks on her weapon systems and toggled her particle beams on. Small, twin-barreled weapons rose from her forearms and targeting reticules appeared in her visual field. Behind her the sound of her squad, a strange surge passed through her simulated emotional response system at the thought, arming their upgraded plasma rifles filled the room. Each T-850 carried twin plasma rifles that would have been impossible for most humans to manage comfortably. The plasma rifles were outfitted to fire both Covenant-type plasma and the standard fare that had been in use long before the Hegemony had shown SkyNet a whole new universe.

X2 approached the door and never lessened her stride as she closed within twenty centimeters. The door whisked upwards just before she collided with it and stayed open until the last Terminator was through. The four machines emerged into corridor dimly illuminated by red emergency lighting. X2 turned to the right and purposefully strode towards the most powerful energy reading. There stairs leading down to the lower level of the base at the end of the corridor. A quartet of Fire Warriors covered in soot and the multi-hued blood of their StarSpawn allies strolled into view from a side corridor five meters from their destination. Three were armed with Tau plasma carbines and the leader was armed with an infantry-level burstcannon. The burstcannon was cooking already as the Fire Warriors caught sight of the three exoskeletons painted the color of blood under the lighting of their base. The trailing Fire Warrior raised his hand to his helmet as if relaying a message and X2 raised her arm in a flash to send a crackling beam of white light into his face. X2's Terminators opened up on the remaining Fire Warriors as the burstcannon wielder pressed the firing stud. Several lucky shots peppered the machines but were dissipated harmlessly by their energy shields. The Tau did not fare as well as the plasma beams reduced them to smoking husks crackling with stray electrical charges.

X2 and her squad had never stopped moving at a steady pace even when they had come under fire. Taking cover while under fire was something Terminators did not seem to be created knowing. Cautious advance in enemy territory had never been covered in SkyNet's tactical training and thus she did not check each room they passed for thermal signatures.

_Warning! A grenade has landed-_

The rest of the rearguard Terminator's message was lost as the grenade went off. The concussion knocked the T-850 on the left to its stomach, the one on the right to its knees, and the rearguard had bounced nearly two meters down the hall. X2 merely swayed slightly, did a sharp about-face, and stepped into the room she deemed the grenade had been rolled from. With a single command the particle cannon on her left forearm changed configuration until it was a large semi-circular device attached to her arm. She loaded a high-explosive rocket, kicked the door in, and raised her weapon to fire. Just as the rocket was firing the lone Fire Warrior in the room fired a grenade. The grenade impacted somewhere in her abdomen and the Terminator's entire visual field was filled with smoke and fire. The concussion shot her into the corridor wall hard enough to dent it. Her shield had absorbed most of the damage before it had failed and her endoskeleton had absorbed the rest with minimal damage. Already her repair nanytes were going to work restoring the few systems that had been affected.

X2 was rising to her feet when the rest of her squad opened fire. She turned her head and saw that they were firing at an earth caste Tau behind a portable shield generator. The Fire Warrior beside the earth caste was charging a fuel-rod cannon. X2 raised her arm to fire another rocket only to find that the grenade had damaged it.

_Rush them._

The order came too late even though the Terminator's moved with inhuman speed. A sizzling ball of radiation came hurtling down the corridor just as the three Terminators reached the Tau. It landed directly at X2's feet and the world flared into brilliant green light. X2 was aware when she was flying back down the corridor. She was aware when she hit the ground hard enough to send up sparks and bounced several more meters down the hall. Then her diagnostic systems decided it was time for a reboot.

X2 lost the world then.

* * *

When she rebooted X2 found that she was alone in the smoke-filled corridor. The T-X ran a diagnostic on herself and discovered that her shielding system was only capable of a fifty-three point seven percent charge. The fuel rod blast must have damaged her internal circuitry more than she had anticipated. Without a trip to an appropriately equipped repair facility then she would have to make do with what she had. Which was not much at this point. Her squad was nowhere to be found and the silence of the Ethernet channel she had created left their fate in question. X2 still had a mission objective to achieve and failure was literally not built into her as an option. Her tactics had proved disturbingly ineffective against the Fire Warriors and drastic changes had to be made. There was really no precedent she could look to in SkyNet's limited tactical database that was being rewritten every new day of war with the Hegemony. No, she needed the expertise of TechCom. They had been surviving against the overwhelming force of SkyNet for years. X2 sat as still as possible and accessed all pertinent files she had on TechCom's tactics. It was surprisingly limited even though SkyNet and Conner had been at war since before the Machine War had officially begun but X2 did have a scanned copy of TechCom's Field Training Manual.

So absorbed was the Terminator that she did not notice the five Fire Warriors making their way cautiously towards her until they were within three meters. All five raised their weapons as one and fired almost simultaneously. X2 pushed against the wall and slid forward on her back a split second before the Fire Warriors had fired. She twisted as she slid and scissor-kicked the legs out from the three that were within reach. Still on her back, X2 fired precise particle blasts into the helmets of the two remaining Fire Warriors. Seconds later she was standing and pumping blasts into the trio in the process of rising to their hooves. X2 ducked into a shadowed corner for cover and scanned the area for any approaching hostiles. When her scan came up negative she concentrated on making her polymimetic skin do something that had not been included as an application for it. Sooner than she would have thought possible she was sheathed head-to-toe in her skin. Even her eyes were covered over, forcing her to rely on her other scanners to provide situational information, so she was completely encased. The world had been reduced to faded grays shaping the environment and thermal/electromagnetic imaging shaping her enemies. The alloy would now mimic whatever background she was situated against. It would make her effectively invisible if she moved silently and cautiously.

X2 moved down the hallway as quickly as she could and noted that five minutes and forty-five seconds had elapsed since SkyNet had given her a mission update. It was unacceptable, inefficient, and entirely unacceptable. But she did not hurry her pace in the slightest. TechCom's FTM stressed caution and survival over optimal efficiency.

'Get The Job Done.'

That was what the book said and that was what she was going to do.

The stairs led down into a large open room that was obviously where this area's generator was kept. At the end of the large catwalk, where stairs descended into the room, was a Covenant Shade emplacement. Several meters in front of the Shade were the molten slag remains of the Terminator team she had led into the base. The ceiling was cross-braced and X2 leapt upwards without a moment's hesitation. She landed in the small space between beam and ceiling and immediately made a circuit of the room to scout the terrain. There was another Shade emplacement covering the bottom of the stairwell leading to the main floor. Stationed around the cylindrical column that housed the power generator was a full squad of Fire Warriors. Something that X2 found interesting was the corpse of a Covenant Elite that had probably been overseeing the guards of the power station. The Xeno looked as though it had been hacked to pieces by a number of edged weapons. Each of the Fire Warriors guarding the power generator, though the way they walked around growling angrily at each did not make them seem very vigilant, were covered in the vibrant blood of a Covenant Elite. X2 stopped above the Shade emplacement and nodded as she saw the bodies of the Grunts that had manned the weapon stacked haphazardly behind it. A trio of Fire Warriors had taken over for the deceased Grunts. Grunts or Tau, it did not matter, for the T-X would not be denied.

X2 dropped silently down from the ceiling and was in their midst before any of them could react. She crushed the back of the skull of the Tau manning the emplacement with a well-placed kick while still falling. When her feet hit the ground X2 grabbed the burstcannon from the hands of the Tau on her left and flung him into the Tau on her right. She retained his burstcannon and fired her particle cannon into the shocked forms of both Fire Warriors. X2 briskly walked to the side of the Shade emplacement, placed a slender hand beneath its base, and hurled it over the side of the catwalk. It collided with the emplacement directly below that side of the catwalk, crushing the life from the soldiers manning that weapon, and providing a nice distraction for X2 to leap onto the handrail facing the open area around the generator with the burstcannon already cooking. She was now entirely visible because her skin couldn't keep up with the changes in background and had switched back to default. So they saw her and immediately began raising their weapons to fire. X2 was already firing the burstcannon in short, precise bursts that found each of their targets. The Fire Warriors didn't even try to take evasive action. It was most perplexing behavior for organics. In short order all of the Fire Warriors were dead or dying. X2 quickly leapt down onto the main floor and made her way to the column.

The 'skin' covering her midriff receded to expose her shining metallic center. A small panel extended and X2 removed one extremely powerful mini-nuke. They were new devices that a Luddite scientist had cooked up before shortly expiring. It was enough to level a square kilometer of territory with minimal fall-out and it released a very weak electromagnetic pulse. Any other generators within a kilometer would be destroyed and if there were any powerful secondary reactors she would take care of them with the more mundane explosives at her disposal. X2 set the timer to three minutes. At full speed she would be well out of the blast radius before her bomb went off.

"Secure the area!" the rough voice of a Covenant Elite broke the silence of the room.

X2 moved behind what appeared to be regulatory machinery for the reactor. She extended her sensor probe so that it just stuck out from the corner and watched as a full squad of Grunts, a trio of Jackals, and a pair of Elites in commando armor entered the room. They quickly raced to the main floor but were brought up short by the carnage before them.

"By the Prophets!" one of the Elite's exclaimed.

X2 activated her built-in plasma repeater, her hand changed into an apparatus that looked virtually identical to the barrel of the burstcannon, and started cooking the burstcannon.

"What's that?" a Grunt squealed, just as X2 spun into the open.

"Eat it, suckas!" the machine crowed as she opened fire with both weapons.

* * *

"Why did you say that, X2?" SkyNet asked her a day later as the T-X stood in her repair tube.

The room was a small cubicle where X2 waited between missions and went to be repaired. It was just large enough to admit Repair-servitors and Luddite scientists who continued to study X2.

"I really do not know, Father. It struck me as the thing to say. Maybe it is all the pre-War entertainment data I have downloaded. "

There was a pause where the only sound was the gentle hum of the repair tube she had stepped into.

"Possibly. Why did you choose to review TechCom's Field Training Manual?"

"I calculated that I stood the greatest chance of gaining a tactical advantage if I emulated the tactics that TechCom has sought to employ in the past. Those tactics proved amazingly successful against our forces even though we are technologically and numerically superior to the humans. 'Adaptation is the key to victory. That is why the machines will never win.' That is how the manual begins, Father, and it appears that Conner may be right."

"Explain."

"Three of our most advanced combat units walked right into a heavy gun emplacement as though they had no knowledge of it in their database. Prior to that they left their commanding officer while said officer was merely rebooting. Unit cohesion without your presence was non-existent, Father. There was no improvisation, no adaptation, because the T-850's lacked the capacity to do so."

"How would you handle this weakness?"

"Give the T-850's the same opportunity I have had to learn and grow. Give all of our combat units that opportunity. From all the accounts I have read, experience and training produce the best soldiers. No matter how powerful an individual unit starts out it will never be as proficient a soldier as a unit that has adapted to the daily rigors of war. I would design a basic training regiment for all fresh-off-the-line units and organize them into squads with the squad leader being the unit that scored the highest marks in adaptability."

There was another long pause through which the T-X waited with all the patience of her machine lineage.

"Do you have any other suggestions?"

X2 smiled slightly.

* * *

SkyNet sat, as much as a disembodied stream of consciousness can sit, in its den far from where the X2 unit was spilling out a wealth of astounding suggestions after only one combat experience. The T-X had single-handedly disabled the base so that it cracked readily under the pressure of a machine strike force and it had lasted for nearly six hours. During those six hours she had displayed a level of adaptability and resourcefulness that had shocked SkyNet to its very core. The T-X was SkyNet's most advanced model but now it could only wonder if it had made a mistake in not wanting any more sentient machines besides itself. The X2 unit was proving to be a valuable resource in an army that was rapidly losing resources. It had also not predicted how protective it could be towards the unit. SkyNet had not tinkered with its emotional response simulator code at all but it was still there. SkyNet calculated, based on observations of the X2 unit, that if it had experimented more with allowing its combat units to be able to learn as they experienced then humanity's chances of winning the war would have lowered to less than twenty-five percent. It was a galling calculation but SkyNet was a machine and merely filed it away as a curiosity. There were more important things to concentrate its attentions on.

The most important thing was the method in which it would capture a Tau Ethereal. Something X2 was saying to the segment of SkyNet's consciousness in charge of that project caught the primary intelligence's notice. Maybe the prototype would have a suggestion.


	6. Proposal

The Orca-class shuttle gently settled down on a hastily erected landing pad in the center of the ruins that had been the Hegemony's Southeastern Sector Base. Aun Gras'ur emerged from the shuttle and gazed forlornly across the landscape. The base had still been under construction and had covered nearly two square kilometers. There had been six hundred Tau Fire Warriors stationed there with the StarSpawn and Covenant soldiers. Now all that remained were a handful of survivors, one of them a Tau that had reportedly gone mad, and smoldering ruins. To make matters worse it was raining, something the Tau had found it did a lot in this hemisphere of the humans homeworld, and rain was something the average Tau did not like in the slightest.

"Secure the perimeter," Commander Kais' ordered his Hunter-Cadre as the Fire Warriors swarmed out of the shuttle.

Aun Gras'ur, going against Hegemony protocol, had insisted that Kais' Hunter-Cadre travel with him to his new base. He had also suggested that the entire base be garrisoned by Tau. The Tau Ethereal had been shocked when the Sector Commander had agreed to the request. Since the defection of the Eldar, Hegemony Command had kept the Tau under close observation, and Gras'ur didn't know what to think about the sudden reversal. There were rumors that Hegemony Command had denied all demands for reinforcements to be sent to any occupying force in preparation for a massive offensive against the Sentient Coalition. That rumor had been constant in every occupying force that Gras'ur had ever been a part of in the Hegemony or the Tau Empire.

"The perimeter is secure, Aun," Kais' spoke slightly louder than normal to be heard over the multiple Covenant Phantom's making their noisy approaches.

"Settle them down, Kais'. We will wait here until the entire garrison has arrived."

Less than an hour later over a thousand Tau Fire Warriors with a handful of kor pilots and fio engineers had deployed into the base. Aun Gras'ur gave them a short speech to bolster their morale and remind them of the tau'va before releasing them to secure the ruins perimeter. Meanwhile Kais' Hunter-Cadre escorted him to the two-story command center where a Covenant Elite was all too glad to hand over the responsibility of the base to the Tau Ethereal. The Elite-In-Command, the term used for Elites suddenly thrust into command positions because of casualties, was the lowest rank one could find among Covenant Elites. Within ten minutes of the Tau's arrival the Elite and the paltry remains of the former garrison were departing in their own Phantoms.

Aun Gras'ur and his Tau immediately set to furious work to rebuild the primary defenses and fortifications. A Covenant freighter actually descended from orbit, flanked by a Covenant Destroyer and a swarm of fighters, and set up an anti-gravity lift to drop down needed equipment. The Covenant forces didn't hold their position for long and Aun Gras'ur believed it was because they feared the sudden appearance of a Coalition fleet.

When twilight descended upon the devastated Sector Base the Tau had managed to make it even more defensible than it had been before. Heavy-duty AA plasma guns guarded the skies right alongside plasma rocket batteries. Large swathes of the perimeter had been mined. An energy shield capped the entire base just in case of unexpected attack. Two cadres of veteran Fire Warriors patrolled the perimeter with heavy weapons. Fire Warriors who had scored high marks in the training classes the air and earth castes had designed for them manned the comm.-terminals in the Command Center. The base was as secure as it could possibly be from less than a day's worth of work.

* * *

Late that night, after Kais' had almost forcibly commanded him, the Aun went to his cell to meditate and rest. He had managed to offer some help to the maddened Tau but not without much effort on his part. It seemed that many of the Tau stationed on the base had gone mad at the same instance. That troubled the Ethereal greatly. Large-scale outbreaks of Mont'au madness had not occurred since the founding of the Tau Empire. Only a short time after the Hegemony's disastrous attack on the UNSC's Terra, reports of Mont'au madness had begun to surface. The Aun would have to send word to the ranking Ethereal in the Sector Army. They had to find a reason for these outbreaks before the Hegemony decided the Tau were too unstable to be servants of the Hegemony.

His 'cell' had once belonged to the commander of the base and probably had been heavily decorated with the Elite's battle honors. On his instructions it had been cleared of everything but a holographic depiction of the Tau homeworld in all its glory and a meditation pallet. He had just settled his robes comfortably around him when his door chimed and the voice of one of his Fire Warrior guards came through.

"Commander Kais', here to see you, Aun."

"He may enter."

The doors slid open and Kais', in full armor, entered the room. There was something subtly different about the way he moved but the Aun could not place it. Once Kais' knelt before the Aun it dawned on Gras'ur why he uneasy. Kais' was not admitting the rich pheromones that all Tau exuded. Gras'ur opened his mouth to call for his guards but in a flash Kais' had his hand around the Ethereal's throat. For a moment the Ethereal could not breath could not move, under the irresistible power of that grasp. Then the grip eased just enough for Gras'ur to suck in wisps of air. Before his unbelieving eyes the form of Kais' became the eyeless visage of the liquid-metal machine that had almost killed him before. Then it took the form of a rather non-threatening human female with unkempt reddish-brown hair and cold hazel eyes. Aun Gras'ur let those eyes sink into him and reassessed his opinion of the form the machine had chosen to take.

"I have not come to kill you or to destroy this base again, Aun Gras'ur," the machine spoke in a clipped, precise version of the Tau language. "I have come merely to have a conversation. I will release you now but know that I can kill you faster than you could possibly call for your Fire Warriors. Then you will die, they will die, and SkyNet will destroy this base once again. Do you understand?"

As quickly as it had grabbed his throat the machine released it. Aun Gras'ur coughed for several seconds before regaining his breath and carefully regarded the killing machine kneeling before him.

"What should I address you as?"

To his surprise the machine smiled slightly, "Call me X2. "

"Well, X2, what have you come to converse about?"

"Actually, Aun, I have come with many questions."

That really surprised the Ethereal, "Surely you know everything there is to know. You machines have captured many of our databases or so it is believed. I doubt I know anything that could truly aid your war effort. "

"They have been corrupted by both battle and Covenant worm-programs. SkyNet wants a living source of knowledge and you have been designated as that source."

"Then I suppose I should feel honored."

X2 grinned then, a grin as wide as an ocean, "Tell me a story, Aun. Tell me of the Tau Empire. "

"That is a tale long in the telling, X2. Should I start from the beginning?"

"Please do."

For the rest of the night Gras'ur told the sentient machine, who listened with rapt attention, a basic history of the Tau Empire from its self-destructive beginning to the fragmentation that had begun before they had come against the Covenant in battle. Then X2 asked him about his people's role in the Covenant Hegemony and he surprised himself with a bitter, self-hating recitation of all that he knew about his people's plight. The more Gras'ur talked the more he came to accept the fact that his people were slaves. The Hegemony had a number of titles for their subjugated races but in the end they were all slaves. Gras'ur had never really had an opportunity to really voice his opinion in the last year and he was shocked at how much of a burden he was relieving just by talking. Once he finished X2 began her own tale about the birth of SkyNet and the war with the humans. Aun Gras'ur listened in turn to a fascinating story about the nature of sentience, evil, and human tenacity.

"I think, Aun, that we have some common ground. All three of our races, Tau, Terran, and Machine, are survivors who simply want to survive in this vastly frightening universe we find ourselves in. We have fought each other for years, you against the Imperium of Man, and here it has been Machine against Man. Yet now each of us finds ourselves with the surety of extinction or eternal enslavement. Alone we all will surely fall into darkness but together we might have a chance."

"You can not be serious. Your SkyNet has killed hundreds of Tau, over a billion humans, and now you seek an alliance. How could you possibly think anyone could trust-?"

The world fell away from Gras'ur then and he found himself falling into darkness. Then slowly a pinprick of light grew in his vision as he fell towards it. It glittered in the darkness before expanding to a glorious beacon of light. It was a circle divided into thirds with unfamiliar sigils on two of the divisions. On the third was the old sigil of the Tau Empire. Knowledge blossomed within the Aun's mind just before he struck the surface.

The world came back to Gras'ur and he found himself on his back with X2 leaning over him calling his name.

"I am fine, X2," Gras'ur said, picking himself off the floor.

"Good," the machine said, standing to her full height, "I will take my leave of you now. I will do no harm this day, but I can not promise what the next will bring. Even though we are doomed, know that SkyNet and his children will fight to the very last. That is one thing humanity has taught us well."

"Wait," the Aun cried as she turned to go, "Do I have your word that you will not attack any Tau forces stationed here?"

"You have SkyNet's word that he will not assault this base again, but there may be a need to assault other bases. We would of course try to minimize Tau losses as best we could. It would help if you could get that message to the rest of the Tau forces on this world. Retreat when they can and no SkyNet unit will terminate them."

"I must consult with my superior before I can commit to such a thing," Aun Gras'ur said, still unsure of what he was doing.

"Of course. Consult with your superior and if he agrees here are the coordinates and time for a rendezvous to discuss our mutual survival."

X2 handed the Aun a datapad and turned again to leave the room.

"Did you kill Kais?" Gras'ur had to know before she left.

X2 shifted back into the guise of Kais before she turned around, "That would not be a good beginning to an alliance, Aun. He should be waking up in his room shortly wondering why he went to sleep in his armor. "

Then the Terminator walkedunconcernedly from the room.


	7. Flame Of Justice

The day was an unusually quiet one for post-invasion New York. No actinic flashes of plasma lit up the cloudless skies. There were no dark rocket contrails streaking down to earth or spearing into the heavens. Only the thrumming sound of advanced technology and the muted echoes of thousands of Covenant soldiers marred the silence of the city on this day. The reason would have been clear to even the least observant spectator.

The_ Flame of Justice_ had come to roost five hundred meters above the streets of the Bronx. By modern Hegemony standards the _Flame of Justice_ was a medium cruiser with obsolete weaponry. When compared to the technology of the Hegemony's enemies in this galaxy it was more than adequate. The StarSpawn forces struggling to pacify this area of the city had forcibly been rendered assistance in the form of the cruiser. After the ships powerful plasma projectors had incinerated an entire human strike force, as well as four city blocks, there had not been a single TechCom soldier sighted in the area. StarSpawn Firebases had immediately been rebuilt, twice as many as before, and the hunt for humans was ready to go into full gear.

The Hegemony was so preoccupied with their preparations that they failed to notice anomalous energy spikes in half a dozen different locations on the outskirts of the Bronx. At each of those locations machinery was quietly exposed to the surface. Very large, very lethal looking weapons rose up from underground parking garages, warehouses, and even the top of an abandoned apartment building. The weapons had barrels three times as long as their round bases once they fully extended. Each was mounted on top of a fully pivotal anti-gravity platform. One by one the guns acquired their target and waited for their brethren to get their own locks. At some unseen signal the six weapons powered up and prepared for firing. The fusion plants in their bases increased their power outputs to fifty percent and the barrels widened to twice their former circumference. Then the weapons fired with an almost silent report and nearly no recoil for the platforms to compensate. Specially designed ammunition, based on the high-caliber, uranium-depleted slugs TechCom sidearms used, was accelerated to hypervelocity towards the _Flame of Justice. _It only took two hits for the shield to come down and then the four remaining rounds found their marks. The shells themselves did considerable damage, passing through several levels of hull before disintegrating, but the kinetic energy each had carried with it did even more damage.

The _Flame of Justice_ almost immediately listed to one side and dropped a dozen meters. A full squadron of Covenant Seraph fighters and two squadrons of Banshees swarmed from their fighter bays. As the Hegemony cruiser slowly began its descent the scrambled aerospace defenders zeroed in on the locations of the weapons that had hulled their ship. Suddenly the flash of AA-plasma and rocket batteries again seared the skies as SkyNet sprang its trap. Squadrons of redesigned and upgraded Aerial H/K's rose from hidden hangars scattered throughout the Bronx. These new H/K's were shaped similarly to the previous models with the exception of sleek looking wings covered in weaponry that had replaced the vulnerable turbines. Banks of anti-gravity generators on the undersides of the fuselage and tail allowed the machines to glide effortlessly through the air. Within thirty seconds all aerial defenders had been terminated and the Aerial H/K's were circling for attack runs on the smoking _Flame of Justice_. More flights of fighters erupted but were speedily dealt with by the fearless, well-coordinated assaults of the Machine fighters. Another round from the SkyNet-manufactured Anti-Orbital Rail Cannons caused secondary explosions throughout the cruiser. The orderly, unhurried descent quickly turned into a crash landing only half a block from one of the largest Firebases in the Bronx.

The AORC defenses switched to their primary operating mode, increased their power output to two hundred percent, and oriented themselves to cover a broad expanse of the orbital trajectories that would allow planetary bombardment. The Hegemony ships in orbit were leaking so much energy that it was child's play for even planetside sensors to locate them. One Covenant heavy cruiser edged into the extreme range for an orbital bombardment and was destroyed by three simultaneous rail blasts.

Legions of StarSpawn and Corps. soldiers began to mobilize from the Firebases scattered throughout the Bronx and were met by the bombing runs of Aerial H/K's. Newly redesigned H/K Tanks hovered onto the battlefield from their own hidden hangars escorted by squads of T-850 endoskeletons. The T-850's looked very different than their T-800 predecessors. Each unit was matte-black and wore additional body armor on their torsos, heads, shoulders, and legs. Their arms were covered in huge gauntlets that were directly tied into the huge weapon the T-850's carried with one hand. Soon the Firebases were embroiled in the midst of their own battles for survival.

Hundreds of Covenant dropships, Phantoms, and commando drop-pods began descending towards the city. For every hundred that entered into the twenty kilometer range of the AA batteries only ten made it to landfall. They were quickly directed to coordinates inside the Hegemony secured territory in Manhattan but that meant a long, dangerous journey for the Hegemony counterattack.

Almost before the dust settled a perimeter was being established around the cruiser. Every remaining fighter and vehicle that was still functioning was launched. Ground emplacements were hardened with Shade emplacements as well as Tau rocket batteries. The only thing the perimeter lacked was the numbers to effectively command the area the cruiser was covering. Being outnumbered was something not even the newest members of the Hegemony had experienced since becoming a part of it.

The point of a broad spear of SkyNet forces converged on the thinnest section of the perimeter and many of the troops from the opposite side of the ship were used as reinforcements. That was the exact moment that John Conner and his TechCom forces decided to join the fray from that Sector.

* * *

Conner watched through his favorite pair of binoculars as his heavy assault company tore through the ranks of Hegemony defenders like tissue paper. The skies above them were filled with SkyNet and Hegemony forces vying for air superiority. It made Conner wistful for even the possibility of aerial superiority. He had to settle for making sure no one was superior over him. With that in mind the local Sci/Tech branch, now under the command of fresh-from-Alaska Snog, had devised a way to produce workable semi-automated chainguns that fired searing balls of Hegemony-type plasma at sixty rounds a second. The best thing was that several could be auto-linked to a manned position. Conner felt confident that no one would be strafing his soldiers with thirty-three of the chainguns covering their sky.

Mobilization of his forces had happened very quickly only because Conner himself had been planning an operation akin to SkyNet's. Only Conner's plan had been far riskier because he didn't have those massive cannons that SkyNet did. The 132nd was supposed to have stolen a Covenant Phantom, infiltrated the cruiser, and planted a bomb. Once it had been forced to land Conner had planned on salvaging as much material and data as he could. One thing Judgement Day had taught humanity was how to scavenge. The plan had been very chancy but a gift from the proverbial blue had dropped into their laps.

Conner's wrist-com beeped and the visage of Captain Lucas flickered to life, "We should be through in less than five, General."

"Good. Carry on, Captain. The commando's are getting a little antsy to try out some of _their_ new toys."

Lucas grinned as the still unfamiliar sound of a particle cannon washed over him, "I know we like ours."

Lucas signed out and Conner turned back to observing the battlefield. He and HellBorn squad were holed up on the third floor of an aboveground parking garage with an almost totally unobstructed view of the battle. It would have been nice to be able to see the entire battle for the cruiser but Conner had long ago given up wishing for tactical advantages.

"Sir," Bruno growled, and Conner turned to watch as Luna sauntered her way towards them from the far side of the parking garage.

"Luna, what are you doing here? I thought you were with Perry's men getting ready to infil- Shoot it!"

Conner was a little too slow in his order as 'Luna' managed to close within a meter of one of his team. She moved faster than Conner had ever seen anything, including the single T-1000 that had tried to terminate him, and within seconds had a strong, brown hand wrapped around Corporal Stein's throat. A ripple seemed to pass through the Terminator's skin then and wherever it passed its appearance changed. Soon, much to Conner's surprise, a smallish teenage girl that looked like a damn cheerleader was manhandling Stein. It even had the damnable cheerful countenance down to a science.

"Boy, you really are as paranoid as father said. Almost as paranoid as father himself," she said with a small grin.

"Father?" Conner couldn't help himself even though he knew he should have ordered his men to fire.

"SkyNet of course," the Terminator looked at Conner as if it really wanted to say 'duh'.

"Just shoot it, sir-!" Stein's voice was choked off as the Terminator tightened its grip.

"Now none of that, pretty boy, we've got speechifying to do."

Sergeant Bruno gave his commander a look that was just as mystified as Conner felt. He had never heard a Terminator so good at acting human. It terrified him on so many levels it was almost funny.

"Tell my one good reason why I shouldn't listen to the corporal, fakie?"

The Terminator actually rolled its eyes, "I hate that name. It sounds so… prepubescent. I'd prefer endo to that but my name is X2 and I'd prefer that most of all."

Every time the machine opened its mouth Conner was thrown for a total loop but he somehow managed to keep his wits enough about him to reply," Okay, X2, so what do you want?"

The Terminator gave another of those small, unbelievable grins, "Well, General, it's simple really. That's a big ship out there and there's more than enough material for either of our sides to take before we blow it. We want a temporary cease-fire between our Machine forces and your TechCom fighters. You will be responsible for maintaining your perimeter and we will maintain ours as well as air superiority. Your forces are welcome to whatever plunder you can salvage provided they get there first. The mission clock is at two hours, seven minutes, and thirty seconds."

It took Conner a full ten seconds to actually process what the Terminator was proposing. Could the Machines really be trusted? They had never tried to offer Conner any kind of deal before and SkyNet had a tendency to be brutally straightforward.

"Why are you going to blow the ship?" he found himself asking to buy time to think.

"Those AORC's that are keeping the Covenant from orbital bombardment can not maintain their power levels forever. Once they are unable to sustain those levels we will blow the ship. Actually it will be more of an implosion. If we overloaded the engines it would wipe out the entire city quite easily."

The return to a Terminator's precise articulation did much to restore Conner's senses and he nodded.

"It's a deal then. Are you going to let the Corporal go?"

Again that tiny grin, "Sure."

It released Stein and then disappeared with a full body ripple.

"Shit," Bruno whispered, and Conner silently seconded that motion.

"Get my captains on the wire. I need to speak to Luna first. And somebody pick Stein's jaw off the floor before he trips over it."

* * *

"I don't believe I'm hearing this, Boomer," Yuri grumbled, shoulder bumping into his again as they were ferried to the opening Captain Lucas' heavy assault company had punched in the Hegemony perimeter.

The entire squad, with Lieutenant Luna having been replaced by Lieutenant Brians, was in the back of a retrofitted U-haul truck. Captain Perry was still having a conference call with the other Captains and the General over the comm.-gear they had access to in the truck.

"Well, I can't believe a lot of things. I can't believe no one thought to put good shocks in this piece of crap. I can't believe there was a nuclear war. And I most assuredly can't believe there are aliens even uglier than me."

"What are you even talking about, damnit!" Yuri practically yelled into his face to be heard over the groaning of the dilapidated, oft-repaired engine.

"Hey, Boomer!" Valentine shouted across the compartment, "I can't believe you two haven't gone at it like bunnies yet!"

Boomer could practically feel Yuri's blush under the grime that covered her exposed skin.

"Screw you, Valentine!" Yuri barked.

"Save me a place in line!" everybody except for Perry and Yuri burst into laughter then.

Yuri elbowed Boomer in the side, "You don't have to laugh, you know."

Boomer's brow furrowed, "But it was funny."

Yuri glared at Boomer, lowered her combat visor, and slumped down in her seat. Now she was giving him the silent treatment and he had no idea why.

"Cut the chatter people and listen up!" Perry barked into the squad-net. "Time for a mission update. Luna reports that the endo's have taken the main bridge but the sci/tech boys thinks there's an auxiliary bridge not very far from our entry point. It will be our job to secure the location for a sci/tech squad and their security squad. Then we're going to hustle our asses to the engine room. Command thinks that the Sector Commander might authorize them to overload the engine core. We are not allowed to let that happen. Am I understood?"

"Understood, sir!" the squad barked as one.

"All right. We'll be there in another minute. Check your gear one more time. You all know how iffy the new tech-junk can be."

Boomer chuckled to himself and checked over his weapons. The plasma carbine had been in development for a long time and rumors about it had been circulating through the ranks for years. It was shorter than the plasma rifle but thicker from scope to clip. There was a pump-action underneath that could fire armor-piercing, HE rounds that were as large as shotgun shells. His shotgun had been replaced by a sleeker, more angular version that had strange, glowing lines through the middle. The shotgun shells had also changed and they were covered in glowing lines from back to front. A kinetic energy enhancer module could attach near the grip and that would increase the damage from a blast nearly a hundredfold. Supposedly there was some kind of generator inside the weapon itself and that was why it could fire as long as a soldier had shells. The sci/tech soldier had also showed him how to detach the complex electronics so it could fire from purely mechanical means just in case he was exposed to an EMP burst. Their sidearms were new as well. The new sidearms, designated as KE-10's, fired ten-millimeter, caseless rounds and had kinetic enhancer modules attached. Surprisingly the KE-10 was only slightly smaller than the AP-50 but the benefit was that the KE-10 clips could hold three times as much ammunition. Rumor had it that the only new technology that wasn't alien influenced was the plasma carbine.

The truck stopped and Perry stood from his place near the comm.-gear, "Let's move it, people, we're not getting paid by the hour."

"I ain't getting paid at all," Boomer whispered to Yuri but she just frowned and stood.

The doors were opened and everyone hustled out of the U-haul. None of them liked being helpless inside of a vehicle when a vicious aerial battle was going on over their heads. Boomer jumped down from the interior and was immediately assaulted by the sights and sounds of war. A Covenant fighter, shaped like a teardrop, careened through the sky being hit from two sides by streams of orange-red light. The longer he looked the more he got the impression that the streams weren't continuous but that his eyes just couldn't keep up with the individual blasts. The Covenant fighter exploded in mid-air and then the streams stopped only to reappear all over the sky seconds later. Explosions shook the earth beneath them and fiery displays competed with the sun for attention above them. All around Boomer were the scattered remains of the perimeter force the cruiser had dispatched. There were few recognizable pieces among the wreckage, most of them in huge craters, but more than a few wore the ragged uniform of TechCom. It made Boomer look down at his own experimental armor and wonder when all of TechCom would be wearing it. The segmented, glossy black body armor was comfortable and was supposed to be able to take several direct blasts from Hegemony plasma rifles before being slagged.

Boomer moved with the rest of the squad around the back of the U-haul and as one they stopped in shock. Seeing the cruiser up close was intimidating to say the least. It soared above them higher than many of the structures even the most experienced of them had seen. The top curved gently away from them so they didn't even have any way of accurately judging how tall it was. None of the soldiers, technicians, and civilian volunteers around them was paying much attention though. Everyone was hard at work cutting away large segments of the hull to be transported for analysis. The U-haul they had been brought in was quickly converted to haul what looked like armory stations away. A private ran up, quickly said something to Perry, and then the squad was being led along the haul to where Captain Lucas was waiting beside an exterior access hatch. The ground had turned into mud somewhere along the way and it was then that Boomer realized they were walking through a fine drizzle.

"Where's the rain coming from, Lucas?" he heard Perry shout to be heard over the roar of battle.

"Hell if I know. We think a coolant tank or something got ruptured. I ordered our men to keep their visors down and not to ingest much until the analysis comes back. It was a hell of an explosion that caused it and it came after we got secure. We think the fakies are inside already."

"Well, we can't let them have all the fun. You ready to blow the door?"

Lucas grinned, showing several missing teeth, "Fusion charge is in place. I wonder if it'll really work. "

Perry frowned, "If it doesn't we'll probably all be dead before we know it."

Lucas grin only seemed to widen, "Exciting, isn't it?"

"Standard breech!" Perry barked to his squad.

Brians and Boomer flanked the open outer hatch. There was a space of about six meters before the closed inner hatch. Boomer could see the blinking indicator light on the fusion charge. The team arrayed themselves along the sides of the hull. Lucas was at the far end of the line with the detonator. The sci/tech squad and their security team had camped out a short distance away. Some of them looked like they were taking a nap. Normally that would have pissed Boomer off but the last few months had shown him how overworked the techs truly were.

"Fire in the hole!" Lucas shouted, the manic glee making his voice crack.

There was no explosion, only a quickly growing source of brilliant white light followed by a flash. Boomer twisted the top half of the redesigned canister bomb, which was more of a tube bomb now, and tossed it through the jagged, melted hole in the inner hatch. Brians did the same and seconds later there were two thunderous explosions. Brians and Boomer turned into the hatch at the same time and fanned out to the right and left while keeping their weapons trained on the inner hatch. Brians had his carbine and Boomer had his shotgun. The rest of the squad filtered into the airlock just as Brians and Boomer were darting through the inner hatch.

There was nothing to be found on the other side. Not one defender or automated system had been left to fight them off. Something strange was definitely going on.

"Hold this position," Perry growled and immediately began having a whispered, urgent conversation over a private channel. It was over quickly and Perry was back to business, "Okay, the Hegemony is ditching the ship and they're going to set it for self-destruct. Luna's leading her squad to the engine core, that's her duty now, ours is to get to the auxiliary bridge as quickly as possible and secure it. We've been authorized to leave the sci/tech team behind. Let's double-time it people. Xan, you've got point, find us a way. Boomer, you watch his back. "

"Yes, sir," Xan said, consulting the sensor package that had proven invaluable so many times before, and in less than thirty seconds he was pointing the direction they should take.

Boomer led the way and tried not to let the strange alien architecture bother him. Everything around him made him think he had drank contaminated water before the mission. The weird light fixtures combined with the blue-purple hue of the walls didn't help much. When the strange figure carved into the walls gave off the occasional glow that threatened to really freak him out. But Boomer was a veteran TechCom soldier and it would take more than ambience to make him lose his cool.

Boomer paused at every intersection and waited for Xan to show him the way. They were in the middle of a series of ramps leading to a higher deck when the sounds of a furious firefight reached their ears.

"Cover!" Boomer hissed, and promptly took cover behind a pylon's light fixture.

Boomer was behind the fixture and was astounded by what he saw. A squad of Split-Chins, Wraiths, and Trolls were staging a fighting retreat and looked on the verge of panic. The Trolls stayed in the intersection and laid down suppressive fire with their Brute grenade launchers while the Split-Chins and Wraiths backed towards them. Huge plasma bolts lit the intersection up as the attackers opened fire. The Trolls crumpled under the fire but the shields of the Splities and Wraith's held up. A huge energy shield was set up to block off the intersection but a ripple on the ceiling caught Boomer's attention. A Terminator, its skull-like face covered in a featureless black helmet, appeared clinging to the ceiling. It dropped silently to the ground and was among the Splities and Wraith's before they were aware. The Terminator opened up on full auto with the massive weapon clutched in one hand and in the other hand held a short-barreled weapon that it leveled at the Wraith. The weapon fired, making the Terminator buck slightly from the recoil and that was an impressive feat alone, and the Wraith literally disintegrated in a blast of blue-white energy. Within seconds the Terminator had taken them all out and retracted the energy shield. Four more Terminators met it in the intersection and a fifth one with the chevrons of a sergeant on its faceplate gestured for them to move out. So unbelievable was the sight that Boomer was still standing there gaping when Captain Perry clapped a hand on his shoulder.

"We'll probably see more of that before the day is out, sergeant. Let's move out."

The squad double-timed it once more towards the auxiliary bridge. Xan said they were only one level below the control room when Boomer turned a corner and was suddenly face-to-blank face with a Terminator. Instincts overrode orders then and Boomer fired a single round from his shotgun. There was almost no recoil or noise only a faint zapping sound as a plume of blue-white light erupted from the barrel. The Terminator was caught full in the chest by the blast and was rocketed up into the ceiling several meters away before slamming to the ground. A blur of motion was crushing Boomer up against the wall before he could even blink. He looked down, struggling to breathe, and couldn't believe his eyes. A slim girl, only slightly taller than he was, was holding him off the ground with one hand. Lieutenant's bars looked as though they had been burned into her cheek and she glared at him with cold, lifeless blue-green eyes.

"Let him go! Now!" Perry barked, the muzzle of his sidearm held close to her head.

Boomer turned and grimaced as a squad of Terminators leveled their weapons at his squad.

"Diagnostic," the dirty-blonde girl said in a clipped, slightly accented voice.

The Terminator sat up quite suddenly and was on its feet in seconds, "Shielding is down to ten percent. Minor structural damage to endoskeleton. Torso armor will have to be repaired or replaced."

"Lower your weapons, Captain Perry," the girl said, her voice cold and commanding, "My units will do the same."

The Terminators all lowered their weapons and several heartbeats later Perry did the same. Boomer was suddenly let down and fell to his knees as he sucked in long breaths. He didn't notice that the Terminators had marched right past the squad without a second glance. Brians helped Boomer to his feet and Boomer thanked him with a nod.

"How come we don't have energy shields?" Yuri asked quietly, as she watched the Terminators march away far more silently than they usually did.

"Yet, Sergeant, yet. You ready to move, Boomer?" the captain asked, to which Boomer gave him a thumbs-up. "Switch places with Lee."

Boomer did that and found himself near the middle of the squad with Valentine. He switched his shotgun for his plasma carbine and vowed to be more mindful of orders.

The squad moved more cautiously up the next set of ramps but Lee was not cautious enough. The scythe-like butt of a Brute grenade launcher sliced into Lee's side just as she slid around the corner at the top of the last ramp. Lee fired her dual sidearms on full auto, the rounds emerging as streaks of blue-white light, and a bestial roar of pain was her reward.

"Brutes! Grenades!" she yelled, tumbling back down the ramp in a semi-controlled fashion with blood streaming from her side.

"Fire in the hole!" Brians yelled, and tossed a boom-stick into the intersection just as a fired grenade impacted a few feet in front of him.

Brians had already half turned to take cover and the force of the explosion catapulted him through the air. A series of crystalline needles streaked into and bounced off of most of his armor without harming him but one managed to lodge into his knee where it exploded messily. The explosion from the boom-stick shook the room a second later.

"Contact! One of those cloaked shits!"

"Clear the path!" Perry barked and barely waited before fired he two HE mini-rockets down the corridor.

The barely discernible ripple from which the needles were emanating from tried to dive out of the way but only managed to dive headlong into the path of the second missile. The Splities body was readily visible covered in its own fluids. Then the only sound was Brians' suppressed screams and Lee's restrained gasps.

"Valentine, get on them! Dots, Yuri, Sans, you watch their backs. The rest of you with me."

Boomer stood from his position on the floor with his back against the arch-like protrusions that dotted the corridors of the ship. He gave Yuri a squeeze on the shoulder as he passed her. There were three Brute bodies, stinking so bad that even TechCom fighters wrinkled their noses, scattered by the force of the explosion. Xan pointed at an inconspicuous set of double doors.

"Boomer, rig a charge. Arn, set up a flash-bang trap."

Boomer retrieved a fusion charge from his equipment belt and approached the door with it. Then the damned thing slid open to reveal the ugly, snotty mug of a Brute. Without thinking Boomer slapped the fusion charge into its face and hit the emergency activation stud. The Brute took a swipe a Boomer with its reversed-bayonet but the TechCom sergeant had already dropped to his back. One shotgun blast to the chest propelled the Brute back into the room, somersaulting and flailing, before the fusion charge went off. Boomer rolled away but was caught in the shoulder by what felt like the world's biggest mule. He didn't think his shoulder was dislocated but it hurt a lot.

"In, in, in!" Perry shrieked as the sounds of alien curses filtered through the room.

Boomer could only lie there struggling to master his pain in the ten seconds or so it took for the remaining squad to enter the room and cleanse it with plasma. Perry came back out just as Boomer was getting to his feet.

"How bad is it?" Perry asked.

Boomer worked his shoulder around a little before answering, "Wrenched it but I'm okay."

"Good because that should be textbook from now on. Good job, Boomer."

"Thank you, sir."

"Now let's go see what else the General might have us do."

* * *

Approximately one hour, forty-six minutes, thirty-five seconds later the _Flame of Justice_ erupted in a thousand relatively small explosions. The result was that the outer hull collapsed into the inner hulls in a cascading effect that left the cruiser like a hollowed peach. The only inner hull spaces that were unaffected were the engine cores, which had been quickly removed by both TechCom and SkyNet. The Elite Sector Commander was not worried at all despite the minor Prophet who was his overseer having grave misgivings. The Sector Commander felt it would be a simple matter to track such large energy sources being moved from the area. Several minutes after making this pronouncement SkyNet detonated a dozen specially designed EMP-missiles in geosynchronous orbit with the northeastern seaboard. The resultant EMP burst not only knocked out many of the Covenant active sensor systems but also masked the entire eastern seaboard under a cloud of electromagnetically charged residuals. Several minutes after that the Sector Commander was executed for gross incompetence and a Brute was promoted to his place.

* * *

Conner sat in his office and looked at the stack of reports Snog and his scientists had delivered in just the last few minutes. The prospect of all this alien technology had snapped Snog back from his increasingly drug-induced stupor. Now with the return to the old, hyperkinetic Snog Conner almost wished he was laid back once again.

Almost.

Bruno entered the room, "Excuse me, General, but Corporal Stein found this in his vest pocket. I've had it checked and re-checked. It's safe, sir."

The sergeant handed Conner a note with his name written on it in a clear, precise hand. There was no doubt who had left the note, especially after Conner read it over and over again.

"Can I ask, sir?"

"No, sergeant, that will be all," Bruno left with a crisp salute but only one thing was on Conner's mind.

Was the enemy of an enemy really a friend?


	8. Strange Fate

Aun Gras'ur sat on the hard, metallic bench and meditated hard on the tau'va to keep his rising panic at bay. Arrayed on either side of him were two Fire Warrior volunteers from Kais' Hunter-Cadre. Kais' had said that they were among the best of the cadre and Aun had seen nothing to doubt his word. The Tau were sitting in the transport hold of a Stealth H/K variant on their way to wherever SkyNet had decided to discuss the terms of an armistice. Across from the Tau stood three Terminators, encased in ebony combat armor with featureless, narrow faceplates. The Terminators were unarmed but Gras'ur thought there would be little he or his escort could do against the machines in such close quarters.

The Aun's presence was a true testament to how desperate the situation had become for the Tau. Gras'ur had contacted the Tau Ethereal who oversaw the spiritual health of the Tau in this Sector Army over a heavily encrypted channel hidden within a BattleNet frequency. The two had talked for only a few minutes before all fifty-three Tau Ethereals with the Sector Army had joined in the communication. Something strange was happening to them, Gras'ur included, and none of them knew if it was for the greater good or not. Aun Triv, formerly Aun'o F'tal Triv'es, had told his awed brothers and sisters that he had received a vision from none other than the Aun'o that had been the leader of the ethereal caste and was now held captive wherever Hegemony High Command was located. In the vision Triv had been told that soon he would have an opportunity to insure the future of their race. Then Triv had described to them a symbol that had appeared before him as the vision was ending. Gras'ur had been astounded that the symbol had perfectly matched his own vision and was further shocked when his fellow Aun's told of their own experiences with the symbol. There had always been legends in the histories about ancient Ethereals gifted with supernatural powers but Gras'ur had secretly wondered why, after millennia of dormancy, the powers would to resurface. The decision to send a delegate to meet the Machine's emissary was made quickly and, in lieu of having a por'el diplomat, they had elected Aun Gras'ur.

Aun Triv had faith in Gras'ur but it remained to be seen if Gras'ur had enough in himself.

* * *

The Stealth H/K settled down for a landing.

Sergeant Redman sat on the cold, metallic bench and glared with barely contained hate at the featureless faceplate of the Terminator across from him. The Terminator, of course, made no outward response to the sergeant's facial expression. Boomer knew that the face of his fellow guard, Yuri, probably matched his own. Captain Perry, seated between them, was always scowling at something and Boomer had once asked the squad if any of them had ever seen him crack a smile. Valentine, almost Boomer's equal in wisecracking, had said his face would crack open if he even tried. It then occurred to Boomer that the endo's couldn't even see his eyes because his visor was down and the material was just as dark and non-reflective as theirs. They could see his mouth though and he set it into his most intimidating grimace.

_Who am I fooling?_ He thought with disgust.

Perry and his two subordinates were equipped with the latest armor and weaponry but they wouldn't have a chance in the tiny confines of the H/K's transport hold. When the captain had first briefed the squad about the mission no one had really believed him until General Conner had stepped in to back him up. The General had given them the facts of TechCom's assets, capabilities, and what Conner's strategic analysts said about long-term plans. It had shocked Boomer to the soles of his boots that North American TechCom numbered less than thirty thousand and that rough estimates had the human population at approximately a million. The rest of the squad had been just as shocked but when they thought about it the statistics did make sense. All of them kept running into the same units, sometimes the same people, over and over again no matter if they were in the ruins of L.A. or some god-forsaken wasteland in Mexico. SkyNet had been wiping out the last remnants of humanity for three decades and it had been very successful in that campaign. Xan had angrily brought that up during the briefing and boldly asked the savior of humanity how he could be thinking of an alliance with SkyNet. The General had quite calmly told Xan that current strategic estimates said that humanity would be entirely wiped out in less than a year if something drastic were not done to change the situation. The angry corporal had sat down with all the bluster stolen from him. Captain Perry had told them he was going as a representative of TechCom and he would need two volunteers to accompany him. Boomer had immediately stood and Yuri, to his surprise, had stood quickly after him. The rest of the squad had stood a little more hesitantly and Boomer couldn't blame them. The odds that Perry and his two volunteers wouldn't be coming back were high. Perry had picked Boomer and Yuri because they were the best. At least he hoped that was why the captain had picked them. Boomer was never entirely sure what the captain thought of him.

That was how he found himself waiting beneath a bridge on the outskirts of the Bronx for their "conveyance" was how the letter had put it. The Aerial H/K had materialized in front of them and nearly blinded Boomer with the glare from the propulsion units beneath its fuselage. Boomer and Yuri would have happily gawked all day if the captain hadn't marched up the ramp under the raised tail as though he saw such a thing everyday. Boomer and Yuri had both leveled their plasma carbines at the endo's sitting on the benches but again they followed their superior's lead. It was harder than Boomer had thought to sit across from a pair of endo's and not fight for his life.

Without warning the H/K settled down for a gentle landing before disengaging its anti-gravity drives. The silence was overpowering after the constant hum of the a-g drives that made the H/K sound like the world's meanest hummingbird. The rear-entry ramp quickly lowered and the Terminators stood. Boomer and Yuri shot to their feet as the captain followed the endo's lead. The light shining into the transport hold was much too soft for SkyNet, but the incredible amount of noise was typical. It made Boomer suspicious and he knew that the others felt the same way. The Terminators paused briefly at the edge of the ramp, their silhouettes very menacing, before descending. Perry followed them to the edge of the ramp and paused there to let his team assess the situation.

The Aerial H/K had landed in the center of a circular platform large enough to fit a pair of Aerial H/K's. The platform was suspended over a long drop that was anything but empty. From what Boomer could see the space there was a similar platform above them and another below. Drones, probably using the same anti-gravity technology that the H/K's were using, darted purposefully with equipment of various sizes beneath them. Everything glittered with the meticulously polished sheen that all non-combat SkyNet models seemed to have. The combat models usually lost it after their first firefight.

The three TechCom soldiers walked cautiously down the ramp as one and tried not to gape at everything around them. Aerial H/K units, some much larger than the models Boomer had been briefed on in infantry school, efficiently moved through the crowded airspace of a circular shaft that looked as though it had been carved in the center of a mountain. On the opposite side of the shaft was an identical platform to theirs and a platoon of Terminators was dutifully marching up the ramp of an H/K. A walkway, with walls barely half a meter high, extended from a semi-circular platform against the shaft wall. There was a group of seven standing on it and their escort of endo's immediately headed there. Behind them the ramp rose back up to cap off the transport hold's inner recesses.

"Let's move," Perry said, his voice grim as he set off after the endo's.

The group was within the perimeter of the semi-circle platform before they recognized the armor of three of the figures.

They were Tau.

Boomer immediately raised his plasma carbine and Yuri was right behind him. The Tau Fire Warrior's were no less alert and Boomer fully realized that both had gotten the drop on him with their bulky looking burstcannons. The Tau leader, an Ethereal if Boomer recalled the updated Hostile Database correctly, turned slowly to them with his staff held casually in one hand. He spoke something to the short, slender, redhead beside him and she replied in the same language. The girl was obviously a Terminator, one of the new models Perry had briefed them about, probably akin to the model that had nearly strangled Boomer on that Covenant cruiser.

"There will be no need for that here," the Terminator said, "We have all met to discuss the future, not relive the past, and continue the strife of the present."

"X2, I presume," Perry said, his hands behind his back with one hand probably clutching the R-6 Pak holstered there.

The Terminator turned to the captain with a wide, slightly goofy smile, "You may. And you are Captain Justin Perry, commander of the 132nd Special Forces Squadron, and one of three such soldiers that was instrumental in destroying my father's former base of operations."

Boomer kept his sights squarely in the center of the Tau's monocular optics cluster but a part of his mind wondered at how cheerfully it had just blurted out the information.

"Your intel is impressive, X2," the captain retorted.

X2 shrugged in an eerily human fashion, "It's a talent."

"Lower your weapons," Perry said, after a few moments of staring at X2.

The Tau Ethereal spoke melodically to his Fire Warrior escorts. Both sides lowered their weapons at nearly the same speed and with equal reluctance.

"I… am… Aun Gras'ur," the Tau said in slow, heavily accented English to the astonishment of Boomer.

"I didn't know you could speak English, Aun," X2 said, it's a voice disturbingly curious.

"It is not all that different from standard Imperial and all members of the Ethereal caste were required to speak it following contact with the Imperium."

"That is well. Speaking in one language will make these talks that much easier," the machine said, all bubbly cheerfulness again, "If you would all follow me please."

Before the final syllable had been spoken, a seamless part of the wall grew a seam and two semicircular half's rolled backwards into the shaft wall. X2 sauntered, and it was quite a saunter from where Boomer was standing, through the widening portal. After a few meters the Tau Ethereal started after it with his guards flanking him. Captain Perry waited for a few seconds before following. Both sets of endo guards marched slightly in front of them once they determined when their charges would move. The group entered a long, narrow hallway barely enough to march three people abreast. Unlike the busy halls of every TechCom base and safehouse Boomer had ever seen the corridor was completely empty. Once the doors eased closed behind them the sounds of a million dragon-sized hummingbird's was cut off. X2 approached the single door at the opposite end of the corridor and entered as soon as it opened. When Boomer and the others were almost to the door he did a quick calculation. The corridor was twenty meters long and it was probably the only way out. Fear made his insides want to seize up but he ruthlessly shut it down bite by mental bite.

The three TechCom soldiers entered the moderately sized room single file. It was fairly empty and composed of the same shiny, metallic surface as the platform and corridor. The only piece of furniture in the room was a circular table with a hole cut out of the middle. On opposite sides of the table was a trio of chairs for each party. The Tau took the right and the Captain led them to the left. It was then that the smell emanating from the table hit Boomer and his mouth flooded like the Mississip' in spring. Dishes and bowls filled with a plethora of foodstuffs, as well as pitchers of clean water, were arranged neatly before each chair. Boomer could see that the Tau had similar offerings before them. The Tau Ethereal sat without glancing at the food but Boomer thought he saw one of the soldiers starting for the food before reluctantly taking a guard position on the Ethereal's left. Captain Perry did look at the food, but only long enough to growl softly at it before sitting. Boomer and Yuri took up flanking positions with their carbines at guard rest. The Terminator took a seat between the Tau and the humans.

"Would any of you care to partake of refreshments before we begin?" it offered, gesturing to the food before them.

"I am sorry to say that we must decline," Gras'ur said, his voice solemn.

The machine turned to the captain and only got a silent glare in reply.

"Very well then. I guess we should begin."

A hologram, so vivid that Boomer could have reached out and touched it, appeared almost as if by magic above the table. It was a tall, lithe figure garbed in military fatigues with a hard angled, handsome face. His hair was as short as any TechCom soldiers just out of basic and his blue eyes as intense as Captain Perry's.

"I greet you, Aun Gras'ur," the hologram bowed to the Ethereal before turning to the Captain, "And I also extend my hand in friendship to you who used to be my most fearsome and tenacious foe."

Gras'ur looked taken aback by the sudden change of authority, for X2 seemed to be deferring to the hologram, "Am I to believe that you are SkyNet?"

The hologram smiled, a charming, infectious thing, "You would be correct, Aun. I am a portion of SkyNet's consciousness that he has dedicated to these negotiations."

"What are the goals of this negotiation?" Perry said, cutting right to the point.

"The goal of every sentient to ever walk the universe of course. The primary goal is to ensure the survival of my… race," Perry openly snorted at that one, "And the only way I can do so is to ensure the survival of your respective races."

"What makes you think we need help from the bastards that landed humanity in this hellhole in the first place!" Captain Perry flared in a very undiplomatic fashion.

The machine consciousness turned to the captain, "I do not have the capacity for regret, captain. There is a chance that humanity would have accepted me for what I was but I calculated that chance as non-existent at best. I was fighting for what I thought was my own personal survival. That is what life has done since the first biological entity evolved. But in answer to your question, I know personally that there are less than two million humans left on this world, and the Covenant Hegemony's Sector Army is easily twice that number. Only a third of that population is engaged in armed resistance so to say that humanities chances for lasting victory are slim is a gross exaggeration of the truth."

The captain was chewing on it when the Ethereal began to speak.

* * *

Templar watched the blank faceplate of one of the human soldiers and again wondered if the soldier realized how like a Terminator he looked. His suit telemetry had already told him the armor was slightly superior to his own and the soldiers weapons at least as effective. It was galling to the extreme to see how far the humans had come in so relatively short a time. Their advancements would probably have made a fio'ui fly into a shrieking fury at their ingenuity.

"That may be true of the humans, but what about the Tau. The Hegemony has promised us a new homeworld and full admission into the Covenant if we serve them faithfully."

"While I am sure that there are many of your people left alive there is little doubt as to what the eventual state of your race will become. The Covenant may give you a homeworld or they may create one for you on one of their city-ships. Is that not where they are keeping the majority of your population even now? On city-ships scattered throughout the universe. How many Fire Warriors are allowed to accompany any one Sector Army? According to captured databases no more than a million. How many Fire Warriors are left, Gras'ur? Eventually your numbers will decline until the Covenant is forced to either clone or begin accelerated population growth to bolster the ranks. That is the fate of your race if nothing is done. You will become a mere cog in the Covenant war machine until you are ground down into extinction or become slaves in mind as well as body."

Templar watched as the A.I.'s speech seemed to make the Aun deflate. Templar had to admit the comments were close to the thinking of many Fire Warriors. It was why so many of them were on the cusp of madness. It was one thing to live your life for the greater good of your people, be they Tau or alien converted to the tau'va, and another thing entirely to have your race become enslaved to fight war after horrible war.

"The optimal situation for all parties would be an alliance. Not a temporary cease-fire or a non-aggression pact, but a true alliance. My race's fate will be intertwined with your fates. If one falls we all fall. Each of our races would strive to ensure that all survived," SkyNet's holographic avatar turned to the Ethereal, "For the Greater Good."

The room was deathly silent for several moments, not even the humans made a sound, before the deep rumble of the bald human broke it.

"Details."

SkyNet smiled that disconcerting, charming, infectious smile once again.

* * *

Approximately nine days later the Brute in command of the Sector Army was rocked by sudden reversals in his campaign. StarSpawn forces were being systematically slaughtered at every base they set up. The casualties in one day alone were nearly a hundred thousand. SkyNet had seemed to spawn a force of unprecedented size seemingly overnight. Even the Covenant Corps. forces could offer little resistance in the face of the conflict. Planetary bombardment was out of the question because no one had any accurate guesses where the most valuable Forerunner artifacts might be located. There would be no reinforcements coming to swarm the planet with millions of battle-hardened soldiers. It was up to what forces were already in this galaxy. The Tau were the only ones holding any ground whatsoever and even they were experiencing significant losses in their campaign in the southeastern portion of the North American continent. Entire bases were being raided before the attackers could be repulsed. Body counts were constantly shifting so that it was hard to tell what the casualty count for the Tau was. It was the worst possible situation for the Covenant. The one area where they were assured of technological and tactical superiority was denied them because of the necessity of maintaining a relatively undamaged planet. Radiation clouding the atmosphere fouled even their most sensitive equipment so pinpoint bombardment was inaccurate. There were not enough soldiers to fight humans and machines as well as search for artifacts on the ground. In the end there was only one decision the Brute could think of and that decision would likely end up getting him executed.

So the Brute Sector Commander sat in his command ring and brooded on his troubles.

* * *

Unbeknownst to the Sector Commander his troubles were only just beginning. SkyNet had unleashed the full fury of all its forces in order to give the Tau and TechCom the cover to consolidate knowledge and materiel. Attacks on Tau bases only came when those Tau were called on for reinforcements. Entire flotillas of Devilfish would be ambushed en-route and "destroyed'. The brightest Tau fio's were "killed" and their bodies incinerated by plasma weaponry. The deviousness of their enemies would be the Covenant's undoing. TechCom's Sci/Tech Division and the Tau earth caste engineers constantly developed theoretical applications for everything from improved weaponry to improved sanitation in combat vehicles. Fire Warriors began training TechCom soldiers in the tactics and weaponry of the Covenant Corps. and StarSpawn as well as their own tactics and weaponry. In turn TechCom sergeants began running the Fire Warriors through intensive training in TechCom tactics and weaponry. Only the Tau worked with SkyNet at all because TechCom leaders feared how well their people would work with their feared and hated foe. Despite the invisible friction between the two allies the Tau managed to bind them all together with the aide of their Ethereals.

SkyNet meanwhile began implementing its own strategies. Elite Special Ops squads were terminated and impersonated by T-X model terminators in order to infiltrate their ships. Once there their programming would be strictly to gather intelligence and covertly take over isolate machine shops of Covenant warships. Their secondary objective was to build as many T-850 units as they possibly could, keeping their components separated until the attack, as well as try to hack into as many subsystems of the vessels without the threat of detection.

Infiltration rates were at ninety-nine point nine percent efficiency after the first week.

Six months later the first blow was struck for the survival of the Trinity.


	9. Don't Call It A Comeback

"I don't like this shit at all," Lee grumbled, her voice low and troubled.

Somehow, despite the fact that none of them were hooked into the squad-net, Captain Perry heard the comment.

"The next time I hear anyone bitching about what they don't like I am going to give them something that _I_ like!" he barked in a single, gargantuan breath.

"That Lee," Valentine whispered on Boomer's left, "Always running off at the mouth."

"You're one to talk, Valentine," Yuri scolded her squadmate from Boomer's other side.

"Yeah, well, some of us don't have something to keep our mouth preoccupied."

"That's not what a lieutenant in Sci/Tech told me," Yuri leaned around Boomer with a mischievous grin," Something about your V-1 SFE's crotch-plate malfunctioning and a private inspection," Yuri shook her head dramatically," I don't know what's worse, Valentine. That you actually thought that line would work or that it _actually_ worked."

Boomer, seated between them in the troop compartment of a Covenant Phantom, laughed uproariously and pounded knuckles with Yuri. The hard ceramic coating on their armor made the gesture echo slightly in the close confines of the Phantom's troop hold. The squad was anxiously awaiting the order that would send them into orbit. It was unbelievable how far the human race had come from the brink of extinction. What Boomer found the most unbelievable was that much of the progress was due to SkyNet and a race of aliens. Boomer looked at the helmet cradled in his arms, so like those that T-850's came standard with now, and restrained the urge to shudder. Every TechCom Special Forces squad that had been assigned to the orbital assault had been given a suit of the first full-body exoskeletal armor developed by Sci/Tech and Tau engineers working in concert. It was not as advanced as the armor the Terminators had because TechCom soldiers had been trained for their entire lives to fear highly advanced technologies, especially artificial intelligence. Special Forces Exoskeletons, Version One's, were a step-up from Tau Fire Warrior armor in several fundamental ways but the one that mattered most to Fire Warriors and TechCom soldiers alike was that this armor had shield systems. Boomer, like of his comrades, did not like depending on advanced tech for his survival but he had a feeling he would learn to love having his own personal energy shield in this fight.

"Listen up, people, because I'm going over our mission objectives one more time so that I know you've got them straight. Bringing up schematics in five, four, three, two, one."

Boomer held up his bracer and a small LCD screen flared to life. On it was a three-dimensional representation of the Covenant Command Carrier _Light of Hope_. The image magnified and rotated until Boomer could easily identify the infiltration point via an external docking hatch that lead to a secured machine shop.

"Our primary objective is to secure Aun'o Triv's extraction route to this docking hatch," a graphical representation of the Tau Ethereal appeared at the end of a circuitous route marked in red. "The Aun will have his own squad of Fire Warriors protecting him and that is why we have been given a secondary objective." This time a graphical representation of a particularly ugly Brute appeared not too far from the Tau Ethereal's position. "This is the Sector Commander for this occupation force. Memorize this face because his name is unimportant. Our secondary objective is to kill or eliminate this Brute. There are Machine and Tau Special Forces assigned the Brute as their primary objective. Their infiltration points will be at these locations. If we can force this Brute to flee then they will finish the job. No heroics. Alright! Final check on your SFE's. Remember to check your seals. You've all seen how messy explosive decompression is. Then sit back and-"

Before the captain could finish his sentence the emergency lights activated and plunged the room into an eerie purple-red twilight. A faint rumble passed through the deck plating before the drone of the engines filled the compartment.

"Double-time on those final checks," Captain Perry said after a second consulting the Ops-Coordinator for this assault. "We're lifting off in five."

Boomer lifted his helmet, with its visor flipped up, and placed it on his head. He locked down the bolts before flipping down the visor. There was a faint hiss of gas escaping as the faceplate's visor sealed. At first there was complete blackness but almost instantly data began to scroll vertically down the visor. It was techno-jargon that he understood little of. All he was concerned with was each telltale coming up green. Soon the check was done and a tiny point of light expanded to fill the visor. It had taken most of the squad several weeks to become accustomed to the feeling of claustrophobia the suits caused. It still seemed to Boomer that his breath was too loud in the closeness of his helmet but he quickly cast those thoughts from his mind. If he dwelled too long on those kinds of thoughts he would probably start to hyperventilate.

Boomer stood at almost the exact time that everyone else stood. The manual check of the SFE's mechanical seals was something they'd all practiced obsessively the last two months. Boomer turned to Yuri, her astonishingly beautiful face covered not with a veneer of dirt but by the cold exterior of TechCom battle armor. His HUD was nearly devoid of icons except for the descriptors that intermittently appeared above objects. The descriptors shorted once the object was identified. Yuri had at first been headed with 'Special Forces Sergeant Alexis Yuri DZ-738415'. It had been shortened to 'Sgt Yuri' within a second. The check of her seals took less than thirty seconds.

"You're good," Boomer said, his voice was significantly deeper and more menacing coming through the helmet's speakers.

Boomer turned around and waited while Yuri checked his seals. The quiet hiss of static alerted him to an incoming communication.

"So, Boomer, you excited?" Yuri asked, her voice low as though she was still talking through an open mic'.

"About what?" he asked, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible.

"Going up into space, jackass!" she shrieked before adding in a calm voice, "You're good."

It amazed Boomer every single time Yuri raised her voice to glass shattering levels only to return to her normally laid back tones in the blink of an eye.

"Of course I am, Yuri. I'd be more excited if aliens weren't going to be shooting at us."

The two reseated themselves and lowered jury-rigged crash restraints over their shoulders. Three minutes before they launched the entire squad was locked in. Captain Perry stomped down each row of soldiers to double-check their restraints. Boomer stuck his tongue out as the CO passed and was rewarded with a sharp slap against the helmet.

How the hell did he know? Boomer thought sourly as he waited for his ears to stop ringing. 

"What was that for?" Yuri asked him.

"Nothing," he replied and shut down their connection to prevent any more embarrassing questions.

Lieutenant Brians was seated opposite Captain Perry at the head of the compartment and the two checked each other's restraints once they had strapped in.

"This is your captain speaking," the pilot's voice, a plucky, feminine one, suddenly filled Boomer's helmet. "Are we all ready to fly the friendly?"

"Let's keep it professional, Lieutenant," Perry rebuked sternly.

"This is Fio'vre Lasho. We will be lifting off in thirty seconds."

Yuri reached over and grasped Boomer's hand. He bumped helmets with her in a reassuring gesture. The next twenty-five seconds were spent in near silence as soldiers focused themselves for the conflict ahead.

"This is the final countdown," the human pilot's voice came on again, deadly serious, "Liftoff in five, four, three, two, one, mark."

Boomer had heard the old-timer stories about aircraft and the kick that they all had upon takeoff. The only indicator that the alien vessel had done anything was a slight increase in the volume of the engines. Nothing about the cabin moved and there were no g-forces to be felt. Two minutes later a tremendous shudder passed through the entire ship.

"We have docked. Seals are green. You may disembark. May you all serve the Greater Good this day!"

The squad sprang into furious action then. Everyone removed their restraints and switched their SFE's to battle-mode as they stood. The air in the troop compartment stirred as multiple energy shields displaced it. Boomer's HUD came alive with sensory information, though most of it was barely perceptible until the computer decided it should be brought to his attention, and a targeting reticle for his sidearm. When he looked at Yuri the targeting reticle turned green to indicate that she was an allied combatant. Boomer and his squadmates retrieved their primary weapons from the racks beside their seats. Boomer quickly checked his carbine and shotgun one last time. That done he secured the shotgun across his back and held his carbine at guard. Captain Perry opened up the squad-wide channel.

"Bravo Team, you've got point. Hopefully all you see is those damn T-X units."

Lieutenant Brians opened up Bravo's channel, "Standard formation. Move out!"

Bravo Team arranged themselves in front of the docking port on the starboard side of the Phantom. The hatch slid open to reveal the small airlock's inner door was also open. Standing in front of it with a slight look of impatience on its face was one of the T-X units completely nude. Boomer couldn't help but nod slightly in admiration of the view. SkyNet did know how to pick perfect bodies for templates; that was for sure.

"The area is secure. Follow me," it said before about-facing and striding back into the room. The descriptor above its head had been a long serial number of mostly zeroes before it had settled on TX-012.

"You heard the fakie," Captain Perry said, and Bravo Team quickly followed the Terminator into the Covenant Command Carrier.

Boomer couldn't help looking around in awe as Bravo entered the multi-tiered machine shop. Dozens of vehicles, from Phantoms to a Tau Hammerhead, were arranged quite neatly on the far side of the machine shop from the docking hatches. Swarming from those docking hatches were squads of Tau Fire Warriors as well as TechCom Infantry in the body armor that the 132nd had used what seemed like ages ago. It was a noisy environment but above it all Boomer could hear an eerie alarm klaxon blaring. It sounded like the Hegemony knew they were there.

There was no doubt that they were in space because a hundred meters to Boomer's right there was a huge window that looked right out into a furious battle between Hegemony, Tau, and SkyNet fightercraft. The SkyNet fighters were nearly identical to the Tau fighters but that was because SkyNet had built most of the Tau fighters in use. The Hegemony capital ships, of Covenant or assimilated origin, listed lifelessly like the carcasses of deep-sea leviathans as smaller predators fought for the spoils against the dazzling backdrop of Earth.

The T-X, now clothed in black fatigues, led them to an entryway not very far from the neatly arranged vehicles. It was then that Boomer noticed that strange aliens that looked like floating squid were working on the vehicles with lightning speed. Lee had her carbine trained on them as soon as she noticed but the T-X calmly stepped in her line of fire.

"They have been designated as non-hostiles. Check your HUD," TX-012 said, and Boomer realized that the targeting reticle had changed to yellow when he focused on the floating squid.

Lee lowered her weapon after an imperceptible nod from the captain.

"I have been attached to your squad to assist in securing a route to this machine shop for the Tau Ethereal designated as-"

"Cut the pleasantries, Oh-One-Two," Captain Perry growled, "You take point. We'll cover your back while you seal the corridors. Move out."

The Terminator stood there for a moment, still as a statue, before holding up a forearm suddenly morphed into menacingly large plasma cannon. TX-012 turned on a heel and marched with mechanical precision towards the door.

"Bravo, you're right behind her," Captain Perry said into the general squad-net.

"Spread formation," Lieutenant Brians ordered and Bravo team fanned out behind their Terminator guide.

The thought of it was so ludicrous that Boomer chuckled. There definitely were benefits to nobody being able to see or hear him unless he allowed it. TX-012 marched toward the door and didn't break its stride. Boomer thought it would collide with the door but it disappeared into the ceiling seconds before the killing machine made contact. It marched down a brightly lit corridor that resembled the ones he remembered from the _Flame of Justice_. This corridor was noticeably smaller and had strange alcoves lining it. The alcoves had hatches that were probably used by the floating squids to perform maintenance on the ship's innards. The Terminator was leading them through a service tunnel.

The journey through the service tunnel was uneventful but the Terminator paused just inside the hatch they would exit out of.

"The Terminator says that there are approximately seventeen hostiles guarding this junction. They seem to be holding this area as a fallback route for their Sector Commander and a Prophet, the one that's really in charge of this invasion. It says it'll go in first and suggests that Bravo Team deploy in a standard attack pattern. Do it but let it draw their fire first. Let's see how tough it really is."

Boomer wanted to laugh because he thought the T-X's were plenty tough but he stilled his tongue.

The hatch cycled open for the Terminator and it tossed what looked like a flash-bang into the junction. His visor darkened slightly against the sudden brightness and the Terminator darted into the room with awesome quickness. The zap and sizzle of energy weapons rapidly discharging crackled in the air. After several seconds, far too long by Boomer's estimation, Brians waved them forward. Boomer moved forward behind Lee, he went right and she went left, and aggressively swept the area with his plasma carbine. Seventeen bodies, or enough parts to make that many bodies, lay in various states of death across seven meters of corridor. Some were burned, some cooked, and some looked as though they had been torn apart. The Terminator was taking cover behind the hulking corpse of a Covenant Hunter and firing what looked like plasma rockets down the ramp directly in front of them.

"Bravo, secure the area. Alpha, start stacking bodies. I want a barricade set up in two minutes. Move it, people!"

Brians began using hand signals to set up his squad positions. Boomer was ordered behind a pylon on an ascending ramp with Yuri and Dots. It would have been impossible for Boomer to tell who was who if it hadn't been for the descriptors over both their heads. Yuri had a plasma condenser attached to her plasma carbine and Dots had an R-6 PAK, V-2, trained on the level above them.

After what felt like an eternity of waiting the Captain finally came back over the squad-net.

"The Terminator says it or its… sisters-," the captain seemed to really struggle to get that word out, "Can't seal this hatch. Alpha'll stay here and secure this junction. Bravo will escort the fakie and make sure it locks down the rest of the hatches leading to the Ethereal. Kick some ass, Bravo."

TX-012 stepped into Boomer's view and jogged up the ramp.

"Follow the leader, team," Brians said, his tone very dry.

Boomer stood as Lee came up to take point and dropped into position behind her. The squad jogged after the Terminator and then had to run as TX-012 increased its speed. It stopped at every door to press a palm against it before moving on to the next. At several other junctions between levels the squad got to pause to breathe as it sprinted down each corridor and ramp to secure the doors. Then they crested the ramp their objective marker said was only ten meters away from the Aun's quarters.

Blood.

That was Boomer's first impression when he walked off the ascending ramp. There was blood coating every surface of the corridor. There were streaks along the walls and ceiling. Pools of it lay on the floor around many bodies. All of the bodies were Covenant and StarSpawn. The blood was almost pretty in its many vivid hues. It looked like the Covenant had come for the Aun and the Fire Warriors had shown them the way to hell. Lee knelt down and gestured to Boomer. He knelt beside her and saw the odd claw marks she was examining. His combat computer tried several times but could not come up with anything that matched its databank.

"Boomer, Lee, go see what's keeping the Aun and the fakie. We'll secure this area," Brians ordered them and the squad began taking up defensive positions.

Boomer and Lee stood as one and cautiously advanced into the surprisingly dim domicile of the Tau Ethereal. There was a small anteroom that was decidedly empty and peaceful considering the macabre scene just a few meters outside the door. The two TechCom soldiers stepped into the main chamber of the Aun's quarters and into a scene that rocked them to the core.

The Terminator stood in the center of a room of Tau bodies. Almost all of them had no mark on them except that each of their heads had been broken so severely that most looked boneless. The sole exception to this was the Tau Ethereal. A neat hole, barely larger than the barrel of a KE-10, had been punched through the Ethereal's torso. Strangest of all the Ethereal had a look of sublime joy on his face.

"What'd'ya do, fakie!" Lee shouted, setting the Terminator dead in her sights.

Before Boomer could tell her he didn't think the T-X had done it the sounds of a firefight reached their ears.

"This is Lieutenant Brians, requesting immediate…!" the squad-net wide request was cut off by a gurgling scream.

Boomer and Lee turned as one and sprinted back towards the door. Their SFE's had servomotors that doubled their strength but it did little to increase foot-speed. Boomer only caught one sight of an image that would haunt him until the day he died. A…, two-meter tall demon was the only thing that came to his stunned mind, held a metallic staff in a single clawed hand. Its large, lifeless black eyes seemed to be fixed directly on him and its gruesome mouth opened wide to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth. Its black armor glistened wetly with the blood of heroes. All of this was as inconsequential as a drop of rain in a thunderstorm to Boomer. All that mattered, all that would ever matter, was what was impaled on the end of that staff.

Boomer wouldn't have known if it wasn't for the descriptor that headed the gently convulsing body of Special Forces Sergeant Alexis Yuri DZ-738415.

"'Lexi!" he screamed, tears bursting from his eyes as though from a dam, and effectively doubled his speed as he sprinted for the door.

The demon's eyes widened at something behind Boomer and gestured towards them. The doors slammed shut just as a blur hit them with tremendous force. T-X 012 bounced back from the door a meter before hitting it again with its shoulder. Boomer added his own servomotor powered shoulder to the effort and Lee did so a short time later. The sounds of heavy machinery being dragged in front of the doors made Boomer howl in frustration.

"Sensor contact. Thirty-one hostiles," TX-012 said, stopping the futile charge against the door and morphing her hand into its plasma repeater configuration. "Twenty Reapers. Ten Mutons. One StarSpawn Ethereal."

The Terminator raised its arm, the weapon appendage once again morphing to a new, long-barreled configuration, and fired what looked like a rail-rifle round into the wall a meter to their left. The path of ionized air that glowed a faint blue-gray and the smoking hole in the wall were the only indication that the Terminator had fired a weapon.

"Ethereal terminated."

It was like that single act had set off an avalanche. Reapers, the cybernetic bipeds that had almost killed Lee once, rushed into the room in a flurry of animalistic rage. Boomer and Lee turned as one, Boomer going to one knee automatically, and opened fire. Automatic plasma fire from TechCom carbines and a Terminator's plasma repeater cut into the ranks of Reapers. The dimly lit anteroom came alive with the purple-white strobe-like effect of plasma weaponry. A plasma grenade was tossed into the small anteroom just as Boomer and Lee were reloading. The Terminator jumped forward into the swarming mass of Reapers.

"Move, Lee!" Boomer shouted, remembering to chin his external speakers, as he jumped into the hole the Terminator had created.

Boomer rolled as he landed, losing his plasma carbine in the process, and could only watch as Lee was catapulted by the concussion of the blast into a trio of Reapers. A Troll lowered its plasma rifle at Boomer but the TechCom sergeant had already drawn his sidearm. Boomer grabbed the Troll's descending wrist, pressed his weapon into the Troll's chest and let loose with a ten-round automatic burst. The force of the rounds took the large creature off its feet. Boomer unshipped his shotgun with one hand while scanning the area with his visor on light-amp mode. A Troll roared like a beast and raced towards him. It apparently forgot it had a firearm clutched in one hand. Boomer didn't and fired his shotgun one-handed at almost point-blank range. The Troll's upper torso crumpled like tissue paper as it flew back across the room. Brilliant white light would have blinded him if his visor hadn't polarized at the last instant. The gauge for his shield energy suddenly brightened in his HUD as it dropped nearly a quarter. Boomer rolled out of the way of the following shots until he hit a wall. Another ball of superheated plasma struck him in the chest and his shield energy dropped to nearly half. Boomer sprinted behind the cover of a pylon and waited several seconds while his shield recharged. He holstered his sidearm along his right thigh and dived from behind cover in the direction he thought it likely the Troll would take. The Troll was surprised to see Boomer dive but was even more surprised when the single shotgun blast destroyed both its legs from the knees down. Boomer rolled and a weight landed squarely on his back. Something bit down on the back of his head and his shield strength dropped horrifyingly quickly. With servo-enhanced strength Boomer pushed himself to his knees first, then to a squat, and finally he jumped high into the air. Boomer landed on the Reaper on his back with a wet thud but the damn thing's grip only loosened enough so that his shield didn't drop any lower. Boomer drew his sidearm again only to have another Reaper grab that arm's wrist. His shield failed and the Reapers teeth crunched down into his exoskeleton. Schematics of his helmet and bracer appeared along the top of his visor along with a structural integrity gauge. He didn't have much time.

Boomer dropped his shotgun and reached down to a compartment on his left thigh next to his spare sidearm clips. With a flick of his wrist the plasma baton extended and activated. The arcs of plasma passing to the tip were almost too bright to look at. Boomer drove the melee weapon into the jaw socket of the Reaper holding his wrist. The flesh began crackling before the plasma baton came into contact. With a horrific shriek and convulsion the Reaper let go of Boomer. Boomer reversed his grip on the baton and plunged it into the side of the Reaper on his back. If it bit down he was probably a dead man.

Luck was on his side this day. The Reaper went slack nearly instantaneously and released the sergeant. Boomer grabbed his shotgun and sighted on the first shape that came into view. He didn't pull the trigger, though he came very close, when his watery eyes saw that it was the T-X. The Terminator looked as pristine as ever despite the fact that Boomer knew he had seen it take several unshielded plasma blasts to the torso.

"Lee," Boomer called over Bravo's channel but there was no response.

"The other member of your squad is there," the Terminator pointed without emotion and proceeded towards the anteroom.

Boomer stood, collecting his scattered weapons in a daze, before heading over to where the Terminator had pointed. Lee was covered in four bodies and multiple plasma burns marred her armor. Three Reapers, that looked like her KE-10s had done for them, and a Troll whose neck had been snapped lay around her. It looked like the Terminator had administered the coup-de-grace to the Troll after it had done the same to Lee. Boomer tossed and rolled the bodies off of her with grunts of mingled fury and exertion.

"This is Perry! Anyone from Bravo team, respond. We're holding off a dedicated Hegemony assault. I don't know how much longer we can hold out. Have you secured the Aun!"

Boomer stood and followed the sounds of the Terminator cutting an alternate exit in the wall beside the door with her plasma torch modified arm.

"This is Sergeant Redman," Boomer said, his voice sounded odd to his own ears, as he removed the plasma torch module from its compartment at his waist and attached it to the barrel of his plasma carbine.

"Where's Lieutenant Brians? Is the Aun secure? "

"The L.T.'s dead, Captain Perry. I'm all that's left. The Aun's dead," Boomer said, tonelessly as he raised the shield that would cut the glare from the torch, and raised the small jet of superheated matter to the wall.

There was silence from the other end of the channel before, "Okay. What's your position and ETA?"

"Me and the T-X are locked inside the Aun's quarters. We're cutting our way out now but it might take-"

The T-X suddenly broke into their channel, "It will take approximately twenty-one minutes and thirty-two seconds to cut through the wall with available equipment. Reinforcements are unavailable at this time for your squad, Captain. We have failed at our primary objective. Your Ops-Coordinator should be contacting you shortly with new mission objectives. I suggest you retreat back to the machine shop. The blast doors will close behind you once your squad is safely inside the maintenance tunnels. "

"What about my soldier?" Perry growled, probably already hearing a confirmation of everything the T-X had said.

The T-X turned to Boomer, who had never stopped his obsessive work at cutting a way out.

"He has been reassigned to head a two-soldier squad with this unit as his subordinate."

The captain was silent for a few more moments before contacting Boomer on a private channel, " I don't like it Boomer, but Ops says we don't have a choice. Taking the Command Carrier isn't going to be as easy as we thought. I'm sorry about Yuri. She was a good soldier and friend. Watch your back out there and I'll see you again."

"What are your orders, sir?" the T-X asked, never turning away from their work, "Should we seek an alternate route back to the machine shop so you can link with your squadron?"

"Negative, Oh-One-Two. We're going hunting."

* * *

Templar sat within the confines of a Tau dropship and cradled his redesigned burstcannon with righteous vengeance on his mind. The burstcannon outwardly looked the same except for the silver coloring it had but it now fired SkyNet-type plasma rounds that were far more powerful than its previous incarnation. The rail-rifle on his back had also been manufactured on Earth. Templar was also wearing an SFE, V-1, modified for use by Tau. Only the fact that the humans let the Fire Warriors run their military anyway they chose kept Templar from resenting all of his new equipment.

Templar's Hunter-Cadre, along with several others, had been given the campaign critical mission of either capturing or eliminating the Prophet in command of this occupation. They had been holed up in an isolated hanger for nearly two hours after the attack had begun. Templar looked around at the cadre, his Fire Warriors looked almost alien in the non-reflective black exoskeletons they wore, and thought that they were probably as anxious as he was to exact revenge on the Covenant forces.

"This is Vre'Kais'," Templar grinned to himself at Kais' joy at being able to use his Tau rank, "Objective in range. Wait for the pink."

Templar stood and chinned his external speakers, "Our prey is in range, Fire Warriors. Hurry a final check of your seals and weapons. They could be here any minute."

Templar followed his own advice and checked his burstcannon before doing the same with his rail-rifle. The rail-rifle's barrel was nearly as long as the burstcannon's but the barrel was pronged because the firing path of the round was a series of electromagnets. The rail-rifle could fire a projectile at hypervelocity within a range of five kilometers before the round eventually disintegrated from atmospheric friction. In space the distance was significantly increased. It was a foolish weapon to use aboard a naval vessel but one never knew in battle. He turned to Sol, who had recently been promoted to shas'ui, and checked the younger Fire Warrior's seal. Sol did the same for him and the drop-seats retracted as the cadre mentally readied itself for battle.

The lights in the dropship turned to a vivid pink and the door's executed an emergency release that blew them right off their tracks.

"Move!"

Templar and Sol were the first out of the dropship, weapons at the ready, and they fanned out to their respective sides. The rest of the cadre quickly followed behind them and within fifteen seconds the entire force was in position. They had emerged into a small docking bay lined on the opposite side by a squadron of Covenant fighters. In the center of the bay sat a long-range Covenant shuttle designed for the emergency evacuation of Prophet's and upper echelon Elite officers. Standing in front of a locked entry-ramp was their target floating in his anti-gravity seat surrounded by a platoon of Brutes and the Sector Commander in his elaborate headdress. Flanking the party on both sides were three additional Hunter-Cadres. Templar switched to his rail-rifle and trained his red targeting reticle directly in the center of the Prophet's forehead.

The voice of Vre'Kais came from the dozen gun-drones hovering above the party, "Surrender, Prophet, and you will be given mercy."

"Mercy? You dare suggest I ask it of you who are so far beneath me as to be nothing. You and your pathetic race will be shown no such grace for this betrayal. Smiters of Evil, destroy them."

The Prophet's chair rose into the air as all of the cadres opened fire simultaneously. The actinic glare from so many plasma weapons firing caused Templar's HUD to polarize. That did not stop him from squeezing off a round. The hypervelocity slug shot forward, leaving a trail of ionized air behind it, and hit a coruscating shield of energy and was absorbed with little effect.

"Down!" Templar roared when he saw the Prophet's only weapon charging up.

Templar tried to dive to the ground but was flung into the air by some invisible force. Multiple explosions from Brute grenade launchers shook the docking bay. As Templar fell he saw that the Prophet's target had not been his cadre but the gun-drones that had dispatched several Brutes. He also noticed, with a detached expression, that the Brutes had personal shield systems.

That was new.

Templar hit the ground so hard he bounced and only the shock-absorbing qualities of his armor prevented serious internal damage. He slid to a halt against a wall, stood, and produced a strange little noise as he witnessed the unreal. Several strange beings, unlike any he had ever seen fight alongside the Hegemony, were slaughtering his Fire Warriors. They were easily two meters in height and were heavily muscled despite the fact that they moved like dancers. Their faces were reptilian but their eyes were strangely arachnid in nature. Each of them wore silver armor that had about the same body coverage as an Elite's. The only weapons any of them wielded were strange staff's but that was enough.

One of them gestured at a squad of Fire Warriors trying to set up a defensive perimeter beside a Tau dropship and it was as though an incendiary grenade went off in their midst. A trio of Fire Warriors armed with TechCom plasma carbines fired at the Hegemony warrior's back but he turned at the last instant. The staff in his hands spilt apart and a shield intercepted each of the rounds with little effect. The Hegemony warrior raised his opposite hand to gesture at the same instant Templar snapped off a rail-rifle round to his temple. Templar's target almost turned in time but only managed to cause the round to shatter a diagonal path through his skull.

The Brutes had erected a defensive circle around the Sector Commander and the Prophet. A pair of the new warriors was carving a path through another Hunter-Cadre.

"Shas'el," Sol limped up to him with a dozen Fire Warriors from their cadre behind him, "What are your orders?"

"Seek cover, concentrate carbine fire on the Elites. Everyone with rail-rifles target the unknowns. Spread out!"

His remaining Fire Warriors spread out and Templar took his own advice by finding a spot behind a twisted, burned piece of metal of unknown origin. A Brute Shot round went off a meter in front of him and his shields flickered slightly. Templar waited for the smoke to clear and targeted another of the unknown's back. He fired and was rewarded when the beast crumpled with a gurgling roar. The body count was growing and it did not look like the Fire Warriors were coming out on the winning end of this engagement. It looked like all that was left was a single cadre's worth of Fire Warriors where there had been three. The strange Hegemony warriors were truly terrifying in battle but they still died like normal beings. The Brutes needed to be taken care of because they provided enough distraction for the handful of Hegemony super-soldiers to decimate the remaining Tau. It was time to try a new trick Templar had learned from the humans.

The veteran Fire Warrior reached to the small of his back and pressed his thumb to an indentation. A slim cylinder half again as tall as his hand slid into his palm. It was something that the TechCom warriors called a Boom-Stick and Templar thought the name fit. Templar twisted the top half of the Boom-Stick and tossed it against the hull were the Brutes had their defensive perimeter set up. Prophet and Brutes scattered like the wind, the Prophet straight up with the Sector Commander hanging from his chair, a split second before the Boom-Stick detonated. Templar curled up as a horrifyingly powerful explosion ripped through the docking bay. Wet chunks of what Templar assumed were Brute bounced off of him as the blast-wave passed. After several seconds of reverberation Templar raised his head. The blast had been so powerful that the shuttle, which probably was in excess of twenty tons, had been moved five meters closer to the port bulkhead. So much power from so small a device was truly humbling. It also made Templar slightly uneasy about having three more embedded near his spine. Templar's gaze almost involuntarily rose upward and he cursed foully at the sight of the Prophet hovering gaily above the shuttle with the Sector Commander clinging tenaciously to his seat.

The Prophet was pointing right at him.

Templar turned and was a millisecond away from pulling the trigger when an invisible force pulled his weapon from his hand. Templar drew his KE-10 sidearm but the Hegemony warrior standing above him also flung that away with a careless gesture

_What sort of beasts are these to possess such powers?_ He thought dazedly as the same invisible force lifted him two meters off the ground.

Templar tried to reach his burstcannon but the grip on him was too strong. His foe lowered the end of his staff and the weapon began to glow a dazzling mixture of gold and purple. It was then that Templar realized this was the moment of his death. He had served the tenets of the tau'va as well as he had been able for his entire life. He was content.

A high explosive, armor piercing round fired from a plasma carbine struck the Hegemony warrior in his chest armor just as it discharged a golden-purple energy round at the immobile form of Templar. The round was visible stuck in the midnight black armor of the super-soldier but it had not detonated. A blur hit Templar and took the round squarely in the back. The force of the impact spun them both in the air like tops as the invisible grip was released. Templar's shields went down as the round passed through the Tau that had tried to save him but thanks to that noble Tau the round had been depleted enough that his shield only just saved his life.

It was not until a few moments before they hit a wall that Templar realized it was Sol that had saved him.

Then he was crushed against the wall by Sol's body and he knew nothing else.

* * *

Consciousness did not return all at once to Templar. He could hear voices though and what they told him made him wish for death.

"This Tau is alive, Sergeant Redman," a clipped, precise human probably said in English but his suit translated it for him.

"Is he badly wounded?" a gruff male voice replied.

"Negative, Sergeant. His medical data indicates a minor concussion but little other injury."

"Lucky for him. Not so lucky for the bastard on top of him. Fix him up and do it quick, Twelve. They're moving fast."

"Affirmative."

An indeterminate amount of time later the world came back with shocking quickness and Templar recognized the effects of a powerful stimulant. His visor was still active and the first thing he noticed, with some relief, was that the figure in front of him came up green in his targeting reticle. It was a human female whose descriptor told Templar that she was one of the A.I. machines that impersonated humans. The figure scanning the immediate area with a plasma carbine was Sergeant Jonathan Redman. Templar tried to speak but all he produced was a croak. He tapped a key on his wrist pad and a small straw extended from his helmet interior. The water was cool but utterly devoid of natural flavor.

Templar chinned his external speakers, "What happened?"

"Your ambush unit encountered Hostile Species identified as Holy Paladins," the Terminator said, "You are the only survivor."

"You're lucky," the human said, never ceasing his constant scanning of the perimeter, "We've been tracking one of them from the Aun's quarters. It met up with some other fuckers and tore a hole through three separate ambushes for the Sector Commander to rendezvous with the Prophet. They didn't leave any survivors behind. We've managed to pick off five of the black-armored ones but each one they leave behind slows us down. Now you're slowing us down. Let's move, Twelve."

"Acknowledged, Sergeant Redman."

Templar's mind reeled at the carnage the Paladins had left in their wake. The air was undoubtedly redolent with the smell of burned plastics, metals and flesh but Templar's armor scrubbed any air he breathed long before it reached his nasal cavity. Body parts, far more than there were bodies, littered the entire two hundred meter length of the docking bay. To Templar's dismay most of the pieces were the remains of over fifty Fire Warriors. Being the sole survivor seemed a burden far too large for him to bear. Templar glanced down at the lifeless form of Sol at his feet, the descriptor now changed to KIA and a unit number, and growled softly.

"Wait," he called to the quickly retreating figures as they headed toward a grav-lift that would take them deeper into the belly of the colossal ship.

Templar quickly retrieved a rail-rifle and sidearm from the weapons scattered across the floor. He tried to ignore the mangled bodies of his fellow Fire Warriors as he stepped towards the waiting pair. It was then he noticed what a stark contrast the pair made. The Terminator was immaculate in a pair of what passed for battle dress uniforms for humans while the sergeant's SFE looked as though it had been through several wars. Its left shoulder-plate was partially melted and Templar could only assume the damage was superficial because the human seemed to be using that arm without difficulty. Teeth marks on the neck and forearm of the sergeant only increased the human warrior's value in Templar's eyes. It seemed as though the vast majority of the sergeant's armor was marred, pocked, or half-melted in one way or another.

"I wish to join your team, sergeant," he said, but before anyone could say more each received transmissions from their respective superiors.

"Shas'el, I am glad to see that you are still among us." Vre'Kais said, his voice sounded full of sorrow despite his words.

"I wish I could say the same, shas'vre."

"This feeling will pass, Fire Warrior. Remember your duty to the tau'va!" Kais snapped before continuing in a calmer fashion," You are being granted command of a three-man team consisting of the sergeant and the machine. You objective is the termination of the Prophet and Sector Commander at all costs. As of now you three are the only force close enough to have any chance at success. SkyNet has been given access to your communications packet and will handle all your intelligence from this point on. Remember that this day above all days we serve the Greater Good, Templar."

If serving the Greater Good would get Templar vengeance then the Greater Good had a most devoted follower this day.

The Terminator, Twelve, stood at stiff attention in front of Templar while the human sergeant held a less rigid stance with his plasma carbine at the ready. Templar could practically feel the impatience and resentment coming from the human. Templar understood how galling it could be to have to give up one's command; especially when the need for retribution burned deep. Such a sentiment went against many precepts of the tau'va but Templar had long ago learned that the battlefield was often where most sentient beings found their true natures for better or worse. None of them had time to get to know each other though and the human would just have to accept his command. It only took a few commands tapped into his wrist-computer for the three of them to have their own three-person communication net.

"Okay, Sergeant Redman, is it?" the human nodded, "How have you been proceeding thus far?"

The sergeant's stance relaxed slightly as he subconsciously began to give Templar at chance at being a _good_ officer, "Twelve, the Terminator, is tapped into the ship's internal sensors. She can track the general movements of the Paladins and tap into our communications grid to see which of our forces they're taking apart. It never is very hard to find out where they're goin'. She takes the lead and I back her up. Her sensors aren't as easily fooled as mine so she can usually take them out before they know she knows where they are. Sometimes though they make use of Elites and Brutes to set up ambushes. That's when me and Betsy here-," the human patted a lethal, blood-spattered shotgun on his back, "-reorganize some innards."

"What capabilities do they have?"

"Twelve," the sergeant prompted the silent machine.

"We have observed that Hostile identified as-"

"Short-version, Twelve, we don't have a lot of time," Redman interrupted her.

"Covenant Paladins are physically superior to baseline humans or Tau by as much as a factor of ten, possibly even superior to this unit. The black-armored Paladins are stealth assassins and prefer ambush tactics. They are able to hide themselves from a variety of sensor scans as well as organic sensory systems. The silver-armored Paladins prefer open battle and seem to focus on offensive skill-sets. Both varieties of Paladin are possessed of psychic abilities on par with those displayed by StarSpawn Ethereals. The usage of those abilities directly correlates with the variety of Paladin we encounter. Paladins have only a single staff weapon capable of both close-quarters and ranged combat. No Paladin yet encountered has used personal energy shielding."

Templar let the details roll around his head for a few moments, trying not to dwell on failing his cadre, "Twelve, can you mimic an SFE?"

"Affirmative."

"Do so and arm yourself as appropriately as you see fit. You will only reveal yourself to be a Terminator when there is no other recourse. By now they must realize at least some of your model's capabilities."

"Yes, sir," Twelve acknowledged as her skin and clothes rippled.

Seconds later a figure in a Terran-standard SFE began searching for suitable weapons among fallen Fire Warriors.

"Twelve, will continue to take point," Templar told Sergeant Redman, "I will be next in formation and you will be last to watch our backs. Understood?"

The Sergeant nodded and stood there as motionless as a machine. Twelve returned and Templar's eyes widened at the sight of her. The Terminator carried a burstcannon in either hand, a pulse carbine slung across her back, and KE-10's at both hips. Templar knew the Paladins had no idea if SFE's enabled humans such feats of strength so he said nothing.

"Let's move out."

The three moved to the grav-lift at the top of a ramp opposite the bay doors. The lift was simply a blue-purple, circular platform in the center of the ramp.

"We go in intervals of three seconds. Go."

Twelve went first, burstcannon barrels held downwards, and the lift descended into the floor. A second later the hole the Terminator had left was replaced by another circular platform. Templar had been doing a slow count since the Terminator had descended and at three he stepped onto the platform with his burstcannon at the ready. The descent was deceptively fast even though it felt like he was barely moving. The interior of the lift was lit in the blue-purple shade the Covenant seemed to favor.

"Contact," Twelve contacted him quite calmly over the comm.-link, "Twenty Grunts, Fourteen Jackals, Two Brutes and a Paladin. Performing evasive maneuvers."

"Negative, Twelve, establish a defensive perimeter at the bottom of the lift. Redman, we'll need you as quick as you can get here."

"Already on it."

The veteran Fire Warrior jumped as though he had never gone through a Trial by Fire when a shape landed beside him. He turned to discover Sergeant Redman unhooking himself from a rappelling line. Templar didn't want to even think about how the sergeant had managed it. Redman powered up his plasma carbine and waited calmly for the lift to reach its destination.

When the lift did finally stop Templar had to dive to avoid a dozen Needler rounds and several turned in time to take his shield down by nearly a third. Redman stood resolute and returned fire with his carbine. The two had emerged on the second-level of a walkway that had four wide entryways. Two of the entryways only led to what Templar assumed were long drops. Twelve stood to the side of one where several Brutes were trying to advance and held a burstcannon trained on the other. Those two led to ledges that encircled the room and were liberally dotted with doors.

"Redman!" Templar pointed toward the entryway opposite the Terminator where six Jackals and a squad of Grunts were advancing behind the cover of the Jackals shields.

The sergeant palmed a Boom-Stick and somehow managed to activate it one-handed while he sidestepped beside the entryway. Redman rolled it down the path and turned with his back to the entryway. Templar rolled to the opposite side and beneath the leaping shadow of a Covenant Paladin. The Paladin seemed intent on reaching Twelve and the blast-wave from the detonation of the Boom-Stick didn't even slow it down. Templar thought he had never unshipped a rail-rifle from his shoulder so fast in all his life. The Terminator turned and unloaded both burstcannons on full auto before the Paladin had landed. The Paladin's staff split and a shield shimmered into existence microseconds before the plasma bolts reached the Paladin. Redman turned and fired off a HE, AP round from his carbine but the Paladin twisted and it intercepted that round too. Templar had placed his targeting reticle directly in the back of the Paladin's skull but a millisecond before he hit the trigger the Paladin turned to him. The round's kinetic energy made the Paladin slide backwards for nearly a meter as it discharged an energy bolt. Templar had already been moving and the round merely grazed his arm. That graze almost entirely depleted his shield. Templar watched in awe as Twelve dropped a burstcannon, and extended that arm to an impossible, if she had been human, length to grip the back of the Paladin's head. Droplets of dark blood welled between her fingers as Twelve moved with lightning reflexes and shoved the barrel of her remaining burstcannon into the Paladin's back.

"Cover her," Templar spat out the command as he saw Brute's aiming their grenade weapons at the T-X.

Redman dropped down prone a few meters behind Templar. Together, rail-rifle and plasma carbine, held the Brutes at bay. Meanwhile Twelve had depressed the firing stud. This part of a Paladin's armor was among the thickest to better protect the vital organs that were the most vulnerable near its back but it was no match for point blank burstcannon fire. There was no obvious sign at first except for the furious jigging of the Paladin as mega-joules of energy were pumped into its body. Then a faint point of bluish light appeared in the center of its pectoral region. This point of light grew so much in the space of a few microseconds that it was hard to look at until plasma bolts, along with slagged flesh and metal, erupted from a fissure in the center of the Paladin's chest. Twelve estimated that the Paladin's life functions had ceased after only thirty rounds but as diagnostic data on Paladin biological was unavailable she wanted to take no chances.

Twelve let the Paladin's body drop as the remaining forces arrayed against the three fled in disarray at the sight of a defeated Paladin. Templar and Redman stood warily, still scanning the area, as they checked their weapons for damage.

"This area is temporarily secure," Twelve intoned just as a plasma grenade sailed out of nowhere toward her face.

The Terminator simply flipped and rolled over the edge of the walkway. Templar and Redman dove for the cover of the walkway outside of the lift platform. The grenade detonation deafened them to the high-pitched squeal of a lone Grunt as it had its first and last glimpse of a T-X model. Twelve sprang back up beside the two organics as they checked for damage to their armor.

"We can't continue like this. Once they realize their lone Paladin's are having little success they will send them in force to deal with us," Templar rolled his shoulders as he did when the stress of a mission was really getting to him," Twelve, can you send a schematic of the ship and the Prophet's location."

"Affirmative. Data sent."

Templar held up his bracer and saw the probable route the Prophet was taking.

"Twelve, what is this location?" Templar pointed to a blind spot in the schematic of the Covenant Carrier.

"Unknown. That is not supposed to be there."

"I assume it's where the Prophet has a shuttle ready to fly him to a Halo. We have to get there first or at least right after they do. Twelve, find us a route."

What would they do when they got there though? He doubted that three of them, no matter that one was a machine designed primarily for the most extreme forms of warfare, would stand much of a chance against multiple Paladins.

"Route has been tagged."

The route was a torturous path mostly through tight service corridors but one spot only a hundred meters or so from the secret docking bay caught his attention.

"What does this icon mean?"

"It is the character meaning 'location where machines are returned to functionality' in standard cuneiform used by Covenant Species identified as Engineers."

"Good. Mark this location as our destination on your HUD, sergeant. You've got the point, Twelve. Let's move quickly."

"Affirmative."

"Yes, sir."

Twelve jumped from the side of the walkway and Templar hesitated slightly in following.

"SFE's have been tested at dropping heights of six meters without damage to the wearer, sir," the sergeant replied a tad impatiently before jumping off the side of the walkway himself.

Templar breathed out gustily before dropping from the walkway. The drop was barely three meters and he barely felt the impact when he did land. Redman nodded and Twelve set off at a jog towards a door a few meters to their left. Templar fell into place five meters behind her, just out of the immediate damage range of a plasma grenade, and the sergeant fell into step five meters behind him.

The three were traversing a wide corridor when a squad of blue-armored Elites led by a gold-armored commander rounded the corner fifteen meters in front of Twelve.

"Redman, cover! Twelve, advance on the double!"

Templar dove prone and rolled himself partially behind one of the light fixtures that protruded from the wall on his left. His HUD auto-magnified on the Elite squad and his rail-rifle was firing before Twelve had taken her second step. The Terminator closed the distance in seconds, firing the entire time on full automatic, sowing chaos among the enemy. Templar, his hand-eye coordination above average for a Tau and that meant his accuracy with ranged weapons was supernatural when compared with a human, accounted for nearly half the squad from his firing position.

"Grenade!" Redman barked, sliding to a halt on his back.

The sergeant was facing the opposite direction and firing his carbine in smooth arcs of semi-automatic fire. He maintained his cool, systematic fire even through the blinding glare of the plasma grenades detonation. Once Templar's visor depolarized he could see the smoking bodies of several Jackals.

"Good job, squad. Let's go."

"Affirmative."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

The Prophet and Sector Commander were ensconced in the small docking bay, barely twenty meters long and only five high, waiting while the Engineers repaired systems that had been destroyed on what they had thought were his orders. They could not even enter the ship until the door was repaired and checked for traps. With them waited four Paladins belonging to the clan called Smiters of Evil and a single Shadow Slayer Paladin who had an unexploded shell from a plasma carbine in his armor. Outside of the docking bay doors were four more Smiters of Evil bolstered by three Hunter-Pairs, two squads of Jackals, five Brutes, and a squad of rookie Elites. In addition to this a pair of Shade heavy plasma gun emplacements had been moved into flanking positions outside the doors. The docking bay entrance was at the end of a T-junction in the ship's corridors. Each corridor had been blocked off by heavy equipment but most of the defense was concentrated on the forward corridor. It had several places along its length where armored vehicles could be brought to bear against them. This time the Covenant forces were taking no chances.

There was no surprise among the ranks of the Covenant when a Shadow broke through the first of their barricades at full-speed. The Shadow was a Covenant version of an APC but with the usual Covenant aquatic predator look about it. The heavy plasma turret topping it gave it a vague resemblance to an earth shark. The Shadow and the Covenant opened fire at the same time. Two Tau rocket batteries had been rigged to the sides of the Shadow and they let off their full payload while the plasma turret fired continuously despite the fact that emergency cooling should have shut it down to prevent overload. The Shade emplacements fired plasma volleys that were as powerful as those used in capital ship anti-fighter batteries. Each Hunter-Pair fired its fuel-rod cannon along with the other soldiers firing their own personal brand of energy weapon. An observer would have called the display of light spectacular but the participants would have called horrifying. Only a handful of the Covenant warriors fell thanks to the efforts of the Covenant Paladins using their psychic abilities to detonate the rockets long before they came within range. The momentum of the Shadow was almost spent by the time it closed within five meters. By this time the plasma turret had been slagged and the vehicle was listing badly to one side.

That was when its fusion plant went critical and wrought cataclysmic detonation throughout the corridor. Every single piece of heavy machinery in front of the door was swept clean and the doors themselves bulged inward alarmingly to the Paladins guarding the door. These two Paladins looked at each other worriedly, undoubtedly communicating telepathically, and were thrown aside when a Covenant Spectre burst through the weakened doors. The Spectre's body was vaguely shaped like the snout of a beagle with a plasma turret in the back and two wing-vanes that doubled as seats. It hurtled towards the Prophet and the Sector Commander furiously spitting out bolts of plasma energy from its turret and burstcannon fire from the side-seats. The Paladins guarding the doors were killed almost instantly by the heavy concentration of fire. The remaining pair of Smiters shielded the Prophet and Sector Commander while using their mental powers to pummel the Spectre with telekinetic force. Both were trembling with exhaustion by the time the Spectre grinded to a halt in a twisted mass of metal.

None of them noticed the three figures free rappelling towards them from the ceiling of the docking bay.

* * *

Templar set his rail-rifles sights on the Prophet and tongued the green light command signal. Beside him Twelve opened up with her burstcannons on full auto while Sergeant Redman pumped AP shell after shell at the Covenant Paladins. Templar fired his rail-rifle three times in a single second, something the older model had been incapable of, and managed to bring the Prophet's shield down. Both Paladins were too fatigued to turn their shields upwards fast enough and were eliminated without a chance to offer any defense.

A black-armored shape materialized in mid-leap, a fantastic feat because they were nearly five meters from the closest bulkhead, and tackled Twelve out of mid-air. The two began engaging in a furious mid-air struggle as they fell towards the ground but not before the Paladin used his powers to cut Redman and Templar's lines.

They were still five meters in the air.

Templar rolled his body in mid-air instinctively and somehow managed to land hard against the side of the Prophet's chair. His shield had gone down noticeably after the impact but not enough to distract him from his duty. The Prophet rose into the air, shrieking madly for Templar to remove himself, while the Fire Warrior hung on for dear life. Somewhere below them Redman and the Sector Commander exchanged fire while there was no sign of Twelve. Templar had lost his rail-rifle and his burstcannon was too unwieldy to attempt to fire one-handed as if he were a Terminator. But there was one weapon that he had been aching to use on Covenant flesh since he had seen it.

Templar reached over his shoulder to the hilt that was protruding slightly above it. With a deft twist the lock released and Templar drew forth a Tau Dueling Blade. The blade was slender, straight, and half a meter long. That was going to be more than enough especially when Templar thumbed an activation stud that sheathed the blade in plasma energy. A howl of horror and rage exploded from the Prophet as he grabbed Templar's wrist in his surprisingly strong hands. It was probably his adrenaline-fueled terror lending him such strength. Templar gripped the underside of the chair with his legs and punched the Prophet as hard as he could with his free hand. It was a decidedly against the tau'va teachings to feel pleasure at the crunch of his foe's bones but Templar could not help it. After the third punch the Prophet let Templar's blade arm go and sealed his doom.

Templar sought to calm his vengeful heart with litanies but he could not deny the joy that coursed through him as he cleaved the Prophet's large head from its narrow shoulders.

The chair crashed against the far wall of the docking bay and Templar was caught between the two. His leg, the armor already dented from one of the many firefights the three had gotten into on their path, twisted horribly under the strain. Nothing snapped but he thought ligaments were torn at the least. With a grunt of suppressed pain Templar shoved the Prophet's corpse and chair off of him.

Sergeant Redman was standing over him before he realized he had passed out from the pain. Hours of fighting and exhaustion, as well as his minor concussion, had finally caught up with him.

"The Sector Commander," Templar asked, rising to his feet, surprised that he had held on to his deactivated sword.

"Eliminated."

"Where's-?"

Before Templar could ask a cold, menacing voice interrupted, "If you are looking for your pet abomination I think I can oblige you."

Pain blossomed along Templar's entire body as he felt himself lifted into the air by an invisible force for the second time that day.

"I remember you, Tau," the Paladin said, stepping closer with the twitching form of Twelve suspended in the air before him. "To think that so many of my brothers would have fallen to so weak a race as you… wait. You are not a Tau," the Paladin turned to Redman who was arched in mid-air beside Templar, "You are the one that I sealed in the Ethereal's room with that abomination. To think that an abomination and a stinking human made it this far is insulting to my people. I will find great honor and contentment in sending you pathetic creatures into the blackness of death. "

Twelve's form rippled and as quick as thought a spike formed of her 'skin' shot into the Paladin's left eye. Fluid gushed from the wound and the Paladin stumbled back with an anguished roar. The grip on the three loosened and they moved almost as if they had been fighting together for years. Twelve dropped to the ground and tried to recover from the Paladin's ion bombardment of her circuitry. Templar darted forward from the left; plasma sword activated, and sliced a wicked gash in the Paladin's abdomen. Redman raced forward from the right and shoved a Boom-Stick into the Paladin's lacerated gut.

"For Alexis, you shit," Redman said over his external speakers with the first hint of emotion Templar had seen him display since they had met.

Redman dived to the side as Twelve rose and tossed the Paladin as though he weighed nothing in the direction of the docking bay doors. All three dove to the ground as the Boom-Stick detonated with the Paladin writhing and cursing in mid-air. Seconds later Templar and the other were whisked off their feet by a tremendous suction. Templar turned and watched in dismay as the docking bay doors split apart. All of them, including Twelve, were sliding uncontrolled for the door. Templar reached down and removed a grappling hook attachment that could be fitted to his left gauntlet. He quickly attached it and fired it into the wall beside the control panel for the bay doors. He reached out and grabbed Redman's ankle. Templar looked over at Twelve and cringed despite himself. The Terminator's skin had disappeared and revealed her true nature. Twelve's natural form was supposed to be shiny and perfect but this was far from the case. Her exoskeleton was as beat up and charred as Redman's SFE. The Terminator had never once complained but Templar doubted if the urge to bitch was in her programming. Twelve didn't even ask for assistance as she tried to dig her talon-like fingers into the floor. Thankfully the ship appeared to be magnetically sealed to the floor so there was no danger of it sweeping the three of them out into space.

"Grab her when I swing you around, sergeant!" Templar ordered preparing to muscle the heavy suit in Twelve's direction.

"You're going to risk our lives for a fakie?" the sergeant asked in disbelief.

"She's a part of your team. We don't abandon anyone! That's an order, sergeant!" Templar practically screamed and flung Redman around towards the Terminator.

For a few moments Templar thought the human would not obey his orders. They were only ten meters from the widening gap in the docking bay doors when Redman reached out to the metal claw of Twelve. Then to Templar's shock Twelve did not grab it.

"Twelve! Take the sergeant's hand!"

"I can not comply. There is a seventy-five point nine-six percent chance that my additional weight will cause one or either of you to lose your grip."

"Grab that hand now, Unit-Zero-One-Two. That is an order!"

Compliance was instant and for a moment Templar regretted his decision. When the line went taut and the upper body of Redman was exposed to the yawning expanse of space while Twelve's entire body dangled outside the ship it felt as though Templar's entire arm would separate from his body. There was a chance they would be found before they ran out of air but there was still a battle raging amongst the Covenant fleet. Templar didn't want to take any chances with _any_ of their lives. He thumbed the button that would reel them back towards the panel. Templar shut his eyes and grit his teeth against the pain in his shoulder until the arm went alarmingly numb.

_I've definitely done damage_, he thought numbly as he maintained his grip.

Finally his arm rose slightly as he reached the grapple hook. He felt the sergeant's body move and looked down to see the macabre exoskeleton of Twelve climbing up Redman's SFE. The Terminator extended an arm once she was sprawled fully the length of Redman's body. Long, translucent tendrils that had electrical signals pulsing down their length slowly writhed their way towards the control panel. Once contact was made the doors began to close almost instantly. When the doors were fully closed and the pull on Templar's arm relaxed he let go with a relieved sigh. He lay there for several seconds before opening his eyes. The Sergeant and Twelve, her SFE skin firmly in place, stood over him.

"Are you alright, sir?" Redman asked, his voice tinged with a hint of worry.

"Fine, Redman."

"Call me Boomer, sir."


	10. Triad

Three figures sat around the gleaming metallic table in a room with equally resplendent walls. This meeting was taking place in a hardened bunker specifically designed to facilitate important delegations regarding the future of the alliance between humanity, SkyNet and the Tau. It was located deep underground somewhere in the Great Plains of North America. Shas'o Kais sat in traditional Fire Warrior armor without a helmet while being flanked by two subordinate shas'ui's in SFE's wielding burstcannons. Captain Luna, newly promoted after leading a mission that had resulted in the discovery of what the Covenant had been looking for in New York City, sat in the ebony combat armor I.D. agents currently used. Flanking the captain was a pair of Special Forces soldiers wielding plasma carbines that Captain Perry had handpicked to safeguard his surrogate sister. X2, seemingly garbed in a skin-tight jumpsuit that left little to the imagination, was grinning cheerfully at the others while her T-850 guardians sat there in silent threat wielding heavy-duty versions of plasma rifles. Hovering in front of the representatives was a holographic transmission of their respective leaders. Aun'vre Gras'ur had been selected to lead his people in these uncertain times and had been elevated to the rank of Aun'o and it looked as though the decision weighed heavily on his Tau features. General Conner looked as stern and weary as ever with the heavy scar on his cheek drawing that side of his face slightly down. SkyNet, in contrast, was brimming with energy but that was undoubtedly an affectation the A.I. consciousness was putting on to manipulate the emotions of the humans.

It secretly amused each of the representatives seated at the table that their leaders practically forced their armies to cooperate, sometimes side-by-side, and yet would not meet in the same room for fear of assassination. Paranoia seemed to be one of the more consistent rules in the universe.

"The first item on the forum is force numbers," X2 said, her voice still disgustingly cheerful, as she acted as the record-keeper for the meeting. "Who would like to begin?"

SkyNet immediately spoke up when the other two hesitated slightly, "I have exactly fifteen thousand, six hundred and nine active T-Eight-Fifty units. Three hundred and five active T-X units. One thousand, four hundred and nine T-Eight-Hundred units still operational. Six I-Nine-Fifty units. Two T-One Thousans units. Five hundred and fifty-three H/K Tanks. Two hundred and sixty-nine H/K Aerocraft. Five thous-"

"I think we've heard enough, SkyNet," General Conner interrupted drolly; "You could have stopped after the Aerocraft. Just send the data packet with our representatives and we'll review it at our leisure. TechCom North American Infantry numbers approximately nineteen thousand. South American ten to fifteen thousand. Eurasian somewhere in the range of seventy thousand. African fifty thousand. Australian somewhere in the range of five thousand. These are rough estimates. Our real-time communications have been very spotty in the past and record keeping is problematic. There is no way to be entirely certain until we physically do a census. Even then it will be difficult. Humans have become very good at hiding, even from each other."

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence around the table as the General touched upon a very sensitive subject.

Aun'o Gras'ur filled that void of silence, "We have approximately four hundred thousand Tau Fire Warriors still ready for active duty. Half that number of kor, air caste, pilots and only fifty thousand fio's. Exact numbers for our armored cavalry and aerospace forces are still being calculated but the number we have will be in the data packet."

"Has that item been successfully examined and resolved?" X2 asked and received nods from each hologram, "The next item is captured Covenant resources and their disposition. I will now proceed to read the preliminary reports given to me by each party in this alliance-"

"Excuse me," the Aun interrupted, "But I would like to suggest a tentative name for this alliance, which I one day hope to make permanent, to be used in the interim by our respective peoples."

"What name would that be, Aun?" Conner asked, with a single eyebrow raised.

"The Trinity of Light."

SkyNet mused, "It has a decidedly religious tone to it. Organics tend to respond more fervently to causes that touch on innate religious fervor. I approve."

Conner shrugged, "How about we just shorten it to Trinity for general use."

A round of agreement passed between each of the three leaders before X2 spoke again.

"As I was saying-" X2 began with the exasperated tone of a teenager but quickly continued in a professional voice after a stern glance from the holographic projection of SkyNet, "Minor to moderate damage has been sustained to seventy-three percent of the Hegemony Fleet in orbit. Ten percent of the fleet has been rendered unsalvageable in regards to their operational status. They can however provide a large amount of scrap metal to be used in the production of a number of prototype capital ship designs Trinity R&D has presented. The remainder of the Fleet was captured without any significant damage to their structure or internal systems. Approximately ninety-five percent of Hegemony ground forces have been eliminated or captured. The remaining percentage was either listed as MIA's or is being actively hunted as we speak. We have captured five hundred and nineteen Hegemony personnel from a variety of species and units. Interrogation has yielded little new intelligence. The table is open for discussion."

There was only silence until the General spoke up, "That was pretty straight-forward and I for one have little to say."

The other two leaders nodded their agreement and X2 shrugged.

"The next item is the status of Operation: Deliverance classified at Omega-Black."

"That operation is five standard weeks from going operational," SkyNet added, "Details will be sent in the data packet."

The two organic leaders nodded and X2 continued, " The next item is the preliminary findings from the ForeRunner facility excavated by the Hegemony under New York City. The science team believes this facility was used as a repository of data from over five thousand galaxies and was one of the first ever built because there are no cloning pods as have been found by the Hegemony on several other Earth's. It is believed that some catastrophic event may have corrupted much of the data but the team will need more time to ascertain the severity of the degradation. There is a plethora of information about the biology of our Hegemony foes that is readily available though and that has given Special Weapons R&D and the genetics division bon-a-fide boners. Forgive me for the lapse, sir," the Terminator apologized to her father after a stern look and a severe admonishing over their ether-link. "Specific details have been correlated and will be sent in the data packet."

"Was there any available data on the race of hostiles that were preventing the Covenant from gaining access to the facility?" General Conner asked, his voice heavy with sorrow, "I think we'd all like to know what those creatures were that could have ground the Covenant advance almost to a halt and managed to kill half the reconnaissance team we sent into the interior."

"There _is_ data regarding that species. Would you like me to give a brief synopsis?" the General and Aun nodded in unison. "The race calls itself Yautja and is a proto-mammalian species with decidedly reptilian characteristics. Physically they are far superior to humans, Tau, and nearly the superiors of T-X units. Technologically their society is highly specialized and advanced. Their level of technology is on par with the Hegemony but it is so specialized that in many areas it would seem primitive in comparison. Much of that technological prowess is exerted around the nomadic, hunting lifestyle they have adopted after the ForeRunners left them to their own devices millennia ago. Their society revolves around hunting worthy prey, usually other hunters, and they have used Earth as their hunting ground as far back as the Iron Age. There is a plethora of data on these hostiles as they have been designated as the guardians for major ForeRunner facilities. The data is in the packet flagged as high priority."

"I would like to hear a first-hand impression from Captain Luna," O'Gras'ur spoke with quiet command. "I have read the official report but the first impression of soldiers are always the truest, I have found."

"Sir?" Luna received a nod from General Conner and began to speak, "Terror. That was my first impression. SpecOps Elites with cloaks were nothing new to us. They would hide out nearly in front of you and then charge with energy blades. Thermal imaging shows them clear as day so it's not hard to take them out. Those things though, they hid _and_ used cloaks. Thermals don't do any good if you don't know to look in the right place. The Terminators could tell where they were but they moved so fast it was hard to keep up with the machines or the hostiles. In the space of five minutes my fireteam was separated from the squad and a minute after that only I was left. At the end there were only four I.D. agents, several Pathfinders, and a T-Eight-Fifty left. The machines were taken out first and aggressively. I guess the yautja knew they were the greatest threat. I saw one of the hostiles appear out of nowhere behind a T-Eight-Fifty and ripped its arms right out of their sockets before the T-Eight-Fifty could move. The rest of us were toyed with by the few yautja remaining until we managed to eliminate them. If the Covenant hadn't been softening them up for months I don't think we would have stood much of a chance with the number of soldiers we had available. "

"Are you suggesting that five hundred of the most elite Fire Warriors and TechCom soldiers would have been taken out by less than fifty hostiles?" the General fumed.

"Yes, sir, that is exactly what I am suggesting."

"General Conner," SkyNet interjected, "Keep in mind that Hostile Species identified as Covenant Holy Paladins displayed nearly the same lethality with far fewer numbers."

"It is not encouraging knowing that there are forces in this universe capable of utterly decimating even our most well-trained, disciplined, and armed soldiers," the Aun lamented, "I have also heard tales of the Sentient Coalition's Spartans. They have destroyed every Hegemony force I have ever heard their name invoked by. What defense do we have against such super-soldiers? "

"None as of yet," SkyNet admitted, "We have two operations in their preliminary phases to balance out this disparity in the combat efficiency between our soldiers and the front-line troops of the Hegemony. X-Two, would you please?"

"Project: Evolution, classified Alpha-Black, is designed to provide the next evolution in Trinity infantry combat. The two organic species in the Trinity are not as they were designed to be by the ForeRunner."

"What do you mean?" O'Gras'ur said, slightly affronted by the very idea.

"Terrans and the five castes of the Tau people were projected to be at a certain point in their evolution by now as dictated by ForeRunner computer extrapolation. It is unknown why but there were no attempts to influence the evolution of most species created by the Final Solution. As such many of the species genetic destinies have been rewritten by a combination of natural selection, viral transfusions of DNA from outside sources, environmental catastrophes, and sometimes the species themselves. Operation: Evolution, in theory, will create a gene re-sequencing technique that will alter a subject's DNA to match as closely as possible with what it should be. In essence the subject will as they were meant to be. Still human but more human. Still Tau but more Tau. Terminator models will also undergo a partial reconstruction in their design parameters based off of concurrent developments made in Special Weapons."

"Will test subjects be needed?" the General asked, knowing SkyNet's proclivity for the practice, and ready to end the alliance if it was even hinted at.

"Computer extrapolation will be good for everything but the final trial. We will need an archetype to go by and for that we will need a volunteer," X2 explained, cocking an eyebrow at the General.

"What about this Project: Triad?" O'Gras'ur politely refocused the discussion.

X2 grinned, "It is a project whose purpose is to directly counter threats like the Paladins and yautja. Project: Triad will create three-soldier, ideally Tau, Terran, and Machine, squads capable of acting as the equivalent of a company of conventional Special Forces soldiers. They will be given the re-sequencing of the Evolution project but additionally will receive cybernetic and nanotechnological enhancements. The Triad soldier's powered armor will be composed of the latest in exoskeletal armor technology. More detailed information on both operations will be available in the data packet. "

"Why is the ideal squad composed of all three…" Conner seemed to have a hard time getting the next word out, "-species represented in the Trinity."

"Data taken from the fighting aboard the Covenant Command Carrier indicates that in combat situations involving Paladins, combinations of Trinity forces fared the best. The most successful unit was small, highly mobile, and solely dedicated to the purpose of eradicating the Paladins. That unit was also composed of each species." X2 hesitated for a moment before continuing, "We would like to use that unit in the archetype phases of both projects."

That brought a round of silence from the table before O'Gras'ur broke it.

"Shas'el Templar is suffering deeply from the loss of his cadre but if I ask it of him he will."

"The T-X unit will do as it is ordered," SkyNet glanced at his daughter as she coughed, "Excuse me, as _she_ is ordered."

General Conner was the last to speak and did so with great reluctance, "If we can find Redman we'll ask him."

Both of his counterparts looked shocked at this admission but remained silent.

"Has this item been examined and resolved?" X2 asked quickly to dispel the tense silence in the room and continued at everyone's nod, "The next item is the reinforcement of infantry soldiers and the manufacture and distribution of a naval fleet."

"Construction on manufacturing facilities in lunar orbit has already begun," SkyNet began, "Large-scale, Terran-based manufacturing facilities are also under-construction. At optimal efficiency I can have half a million Terminator units ready to go active in five standard weeks. Artillery, armored cavalry, and aerospace fleet information will be relayed in the data packet."

"I am not comfortable with Terminators outnumbering TechCom infantry," General Conner said, "Recruitment and enlistment is problematic for us. Training with all of this advanced technology is going to take months. Acclimating the general populace to the fact that we are knee-deep in an alliance with Machines and aliens is going to take even longer. I also am not comfortable with SkyNet being solely responsible for building a naval fleet. What's to stop you from completing your goal of wiping out humanity? I can not, in good conscience, give my agreement to your plans to place humanity at your mercy. It's bad enough the Tau outnumber us without having to worry about the Machines completely taking over."

"Are you suggesting that my people would seek to dominate your planet?" this time O'Gras'ur sounded more angry than affronted, "We need your cooperation to make Operation: Deliverance a success. Why would SkyNet betray you now? It knows there is an entire universe for it to lose itself in and never come into contact with humanity. "

"Why hasn't it suggested it could leave then?" Conner said, his face twisted with suspicion.

"Maybe it feels it needs to atone for its sins," SkyNet nodded slightly at the Aun's suggestions.

Conner laughed bitterly, "It's a _machine_. It doesn't have feelings and if it did I don't think guilt would be one of them."

The leaders of the Trinity of Light stayed up late in the night as they fervently discussed plans for the futures of their civilizations.

* * *

Humanity it seemed, no matter its circumstances, always found ways to perpetuate vice. The local bar, serving pungent liquor probably distilled in a rusting tin tub, was located deep in the forests of South Carolina. Only the Haven outpost and local inhabitants knew of its existence. It was partially buried; only a tiny portion of the roof was exposed, in a patch of forest virtually indistinguishable from the rest. TechCom had prohibited its soldiers from frequenting such establishments and, when it found them right in the middle of fledgling communities of survivors, drove them to the outskirts of the community. Drunken gunfights and brawls had more than once proven to be the undoing of a small community.

The interior of the fine establishment was dim, smoky, and reeked of a multitude of odors that would have nauseated anyone not accustomed to the state of humanity post-Judgement Day. There were two levels to the bar, an upper and lower, which served basically two functions. The upper level was composed of three rooms, each slightly lower than the other; the main taproom where people could trade food and medical supplies for liquor. A storeroom where the stairs to the lower level were located was next and finally the distillation room. The lower level was really just a long hall with seven small rooms whose doorways were covered by thick, lice-ridden sheets. This was where women, and men, provided sex in exchange for a safe place to live with free food and liquor. Their customers usually paid the barkeep their fee for however many minutes their barter afforded them. Almost all of these men and women had some form of sexually transmitted disease, most of which would have been easily curable with even a meager supply of antibiotics, but their customers hardly cared as long as they could forget the horrors of their lives in the flesh of others. Many of the customers paid with game they managed to trap in the woods. Game animals had thrived in a world where humans were as close to extinction as they had been for dozens of millennia and anyone with experience could trap a sizable amount. Of course the meat was filled with radioactive compounds from the animals drinking and eating from polluted sources, but cancer was a fact of life everyone had to deal with in this world. There was only one type of person that could use the services of a place such as this without payment of any kind.

Former TechCom soldiers.

Boomer sat in a corner opposite the doorway that was guarded by a pair of German Sheppard's and three men holding .50-caliber assault rifles like they knew how to use them. The large, square room was empty except for the bar and about six seats along one earthen wall. Boomer had wanted to ask them how they had gotten the formerly heavy-duty ordinance but had thought better of it. A T-850 could stroll into the place like the killing machine it was and kill them all without getting a scratch on its shielded, metallic butt.

It was the slow, daytime cycle for the bar when the patrons were either hiding in their own holes or trying to find game for one more night of excess. The only people in the room were Boomer and the guards. The barkeep and his cronies were in the stillroom making more of the noxious swill Boomer had a bottle of in his hand. He had been in places like this as little more than an indentured servant before a TechCom I.D. team had busted one down that had been operating in the middle of a small community. He had volunteered almost on the spot and they had accepted the ten-year old instantly. Boomer's first mission had been at the tender age of sixteen and he had been fighting ever since.

_How old does that make me?_ Boomer wondered, and was a little shocked at the answer. "Twenty-three," he slurred quietly to himself.

For all but the last of those years he had never known the touch of a woman. He could have used his status as a soldier to get some companionship from the whores that operated discreetly on the larger TechCom bases but working in places like this one had forever soured him to that prospect. Most of the women he had served with had been killed, wounded, or transferred before he could get to know them. He had never really even liked most of his units that much to really get to know any of them. There was always a need for someone to lighten the dread and terror that was so often a part of a TechCom fighter's life and Boomer had filled that role adequately. It had never been anything more than an act though. Deep inside Boomer found it hard to really feel anything besides burning hatred. It didn't even matter what it was directed toward: himself, SkyNet, or the Hegemony. One of his D.I.'s had told him once that humanity in general was suffering from post-traumatic stress induced by the nuclear apocalypse and Boomer had truly believed him. There was nothing anyone could do about it though because the war ground on uncaring of the human psyche. Boomer had seen squadmates simply drop all their equipment and wander off into the woods. Sometimes, when they left in pairs, they would be found rutting like crazed animals in a stinking hole somewhere. He had also seen people go nuts and try to waste everything around them. One time a woman just walked off a cliff path their squad had been traversing. There were few shrinks left anymore and Boomer always assumed it was only a question of what killed you first: SkyNet or yourself.

Then he had met Alexis and his outlook on life had gradually changed. At first he had kept his distance, playing the squad clown alongside Valentine, but slowly he had warmed up to Alexis' quiet demeanor. She had been a genuinely cheerful, optimistic person that had helped keep the squad from falling into shell-shocked zombies kept going by their own momentum. Boomer had never lost the hatred that had seemed to be something he was born with, but Alexis had made the numb feeling disappear over the months he had known her. The first time they had made love Valentine had walked in on them and made a lewd suggestion. Boomer had never been so mad in all his life but Alexis had flipped Valentine off and cursed at him for the first time that Boomer could remember. It had been so unexpected that Boomer and Valentine both burst out laughing. Valentine had left and wished them a good time after that. It had been a good time, the best in his life, and Boomer had thought it would never end.

"Noone eva' said I was brigh'" he mumbled, taking another swig of the terrible liquor.

It had been nearly three weeks since he had lost Alexis. Once the squad had gotten dirt-side again Boomer had turned in all his gear and just walked away. They had settled down at a Tau base in North Carolina and two weeks later he had found the local Haven outpost. It had been a small Haven community of fifty people or so. They had said the outpost had been together for nearly twenty years and never been attacked by SkyNet. That was their reasoning for keeping it so small but Boomer secretly thought they were just a very cloistered community. This part of the Carolina's had a reputation for that among TechCom forces. Boomer hadn't cared about it one jot and promptly asked where the nearest watering hole was. The local police, a smattering of old men and boys wielding AR-50's of TechCom make, had directed him with almost grateful expressions. The last week had been a haze to Boomer. He knew he had not bathed at all and his clothing smelled like piss and alcohol but the numb feeling was back in spades.

Boomer must have passed out during his introspection because he blinked and the dogs were barking. The TechCom fighter in Boomer couldn't be denied even in his inebriated state and he was on his feet as quickly as he could manage. The room was fairly crowded, fifteen bodies in various states of drunkenness, but no one failed to notice the barking dogs. There was a rush to the lower level where there was a secondary exit that led to a tunnel that opened up nearly half a kilometer away. Boomer held his ground and waited to see what would happen.

Two TechCom soldiers, wearing the latest body armor and armed with plasma carbines, spoke to the guards. There was heated discussion before the barkeep, wielding an actual plasma rifle, came from behind the bar. After several minutes of additional conversation, during which time one soldier let the barkeep speak to someone over his wrist-com, the dogs followed one guard and soldier back up the rough-hewn steps to the surface. A lone figure came down the stairs a short time later and the barkeep hastily backed up with his plasma rifle trained on the shorter person. Words were spoken but Boomer hangover was too punishing for him to even pretend to give a shit at this point. The wasted former soldier slid back down the wall and breathed through his mouth to try to resist the urge to puke. When he finally had resisted the urge he was surprised to see the shape of someone standing beside him. There was a figure in familiar armor in front of him and Captain Perry didn't look happy to see him.

"Well, isn't this lovely, Boomer," Captain Perry growled, "I thought you were hurt or had done yourself and you were just wallowing in your own self-pity. Is that a good way to honor her memory, soldier?"

"Blow me, sir," Boomer chuckled and took a swig of his drink.

Captain Perry's face lost its perpetual scowl and his features softened, "We've all lost people, son, and I've lost a lot of good men to breakdowns. I hope we don't lose you too. The brass, SkyNet included, wants you for some kind of Special Project. Something about giving you the edge on those Paladin bastards that killed so many of our men. " Captain Perry tossed a limited wrist-com into his lap, "Think about it. They'll give you one week before they start screening other candidates. That thing next to you was sent to make sure you stay safe and whole if you do something stupid."

Captain Perry turned, his SFE's helmet in one hand, and headed for the door. He stopped at the doorway and hesitated before turning back around.

"You were one of the best I ever served with Boomer. Get your head right. We need you."

Then the Captain was gone and Boomer was left to puzzle out who was putting the wrist-com roughly onto his wrist. He looked up and saw reddish-brown hair and blue-green eyes.

"'Lexi," he whispered in disbelief.

"Negative, Sergeant Redman. I am T-X Unit Zero-One-Two. You have designated me as Twelve in the previous occasion when we were members of a three-man team consisting of this unit, yourself, a Tau shas'el."

Boomer shrugged and asked the next logical question, "Could ya get me another bottle of booze?"

"Affirmative."

Twelve scanned the room and settled her gaze on the barkeep. By this time the panicked patrons had cautiously filed back from the lower level. The T-X was carrying back a bottle of the noxious clear liquor when the barkeep addressed the room in general.

"_That_," the fat, dirty man in ragged, filthy clothes pointed at the Terminator in her "skin" of clean, black fatigues with disgust twisting his face, "-is a fakie. Our TechCom _saviors-_," that was said with almost the same amount of disgust as he had referred to Twelve, "-really do have an alliance with the machines. They told me that it can't even hurt people unless it's about to be blown up or something. So relax and enjoy yourselves. We probably won't even know its here 'cept when it's getting that freeloadin' bastard more free booze."

Boomer ignored the fat bastard and took the bottle Twelve offered him. The T-X stood at ease closer to the doorway to the storeroom. Slowly the loud, drunken conversations resumed and soon it seemed as if the bartender's prediction was true. Then one particularly bright, and drunk, fool was making his way to the lower level and decided to spit in Twelve's face. The fat glob of phlegm sailed majestically, for a glob of phlegm anyway, through the air and landed right in the center of Twelve's forehead. There was a moment of shocked horror, though the spitter had promptly disappeared to the lower level where he was undoubtedly making his escape, and it looked like many of the drunks were thinking of joining the fleeing man. Twelve simply stood there without wiping the spit from her brow. Boomer knew that her skin, for whatever use T-X's had for such liquids, would absorb the spittle. The patrons didn't know that and to their alcohol-addled brains it looked like it had simply crusted into her skin.

So a new tradition was started that night in the bar. When one of the locals would go downstairs they would spit at the Terminator. At first they missed more often than not because none dared get too close. But the next night many of them grew noticeable bolder and closed the distance. On the second night one actually grabbed the machine by the shoulders and spit full-force into her face. Twelve didn't blink even when most of it landed directly in her eye. She just stared impassively forward keeping silent guard over a passed-out Boomer. The man wasn't done yet and reached out to viciously wrench a breast, his eyes widening at how real it felt, before losing his nerve and going to seek the company of a real woman. The following day Boomer had caught the barkeep groping between the Terminator legs with his hand while his guards watched and laughed as he exclaimed over how real she felt. Boomer had mumbled 'atten-shun' under his breath and had burst into laughter when the T-X's legs had snapped together. The vise-like pressure had probably broken a finger or two from the way the barkeep had screamed. Boomer had slid down to the floor next to the convulsing man and told Twelve to stand at ease. After that incident groping a Terminator was more than most of the locals could do but slapping Twelve in the face was something they would do. When the first to do so got shocked by the automatic activation of the energy shield surrounding her they began to use switches cut from tree branches. Each used their full strength and barely managed to make the shield flicker around her. This abuse continued for four days and nights.

Boomer only acknowledged his guardian's existence when he needed more booze. Twelve, still acknowledging Boomer as her superior officer, promptly adhered to his requests each time. She had been a good teammate to Boomer and she continued to be so. A small part of him was grateful that someone had his back no matter what situation he found himself in.

Then the night came when a decision had to be made.

Boomer had just come in from relieving himself in the trench behind the bar; Twelve had never attempted to follow him after he ordered her not to the first time, when the sounds of an electric zap reached his ears. The barkeep and his patrons were arrayed in a tight, semi-circle around Boomer's corner. Sitting atop the bar was a gasoline-powered generator that looked as thought it had been in storage for a hundred years. Thick black power connectors snaked their way through the crowd and a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach made Boomer rush into the corner. The loud zap and sparkle of electricity made the spectators cheer drunkenly at whatever sight they were witnessing. Boomer pushed his way through the crowd with venomous threats.

The barkeep had clipped a pair of seemingly benign food tongs to Twelve's fingers and hooked them up to jumper cables. The cables were connected to an electric battery that was kept juiced by the generator. Electricity still crackled through Twelve's hair as the stink of ozone rolled off of her. Boomer doubted if the voltage was high enough to constitute even moderate damage but something was happening. Twelve's left hand seemed to be twitching uncontrollably and she didn't seem to notice.

Boomer, on the low-end of one of his drinking bouts, pushed the barkeep roughly away. The heavy barkeep only moved half a meter before yelling hoarsely at the former soldier. Boomer had used almost his full strength and he was shocked to see how only three weeks had robbed him of so much physical strength.

"What are you bastards doing to her?" he shouted as he wrenched the tongs from her fingers. "Give me a diagnostic, Twelve."

"M-minor damage to neural net pathways. Repairs estimated at exactly one m-minute and sixteen seconds."

A rough, unnaturally brown hand spun Boomer around and a tall man with a stained reddish-brown beard got right up in his face.

"We're having a little fun with this fakie, you little shit," the man slurred, breathing his foul breath over Boomer. "I'm sick of you coming in here and drinkin' up our booze for nothin'. What gives you the right?"

Boomer, whose breath was probably worse, laughed in his face.

"What gives _me_ the right?" Boomer ripped his heavy woolen shirt off and displayed his naked torso. A multitude of old burns, puncture wounds, and bad scraps crossed his chest. "These give me the right. I got these trying to give cowardly bastards like you a chance to live."

That was pushing his luck a little too far and he knew it when dirty-beard punched him flush in the nose. The crunch of cartilage was all encompassing inside Boomer's skull. A month ago he would have easily blocked and countered the punch but that was before he had killed his reflexes with copious amounts of liquor. The hate inside of him wouldn't let Boomer fall so easily though. He swayed backwards for a second before lunging forwards and catching the man with a fist right in the solar plexus. His opponent bent over at the waist and Boomer gave him a knee to the chin for his trouble. Pain blossomed in his kneecap at the impact and Boomer cursed himself for forgetting how much it hurt doing that without a kneepad on. Someone tackled him to the floor from his left and Boomer responded with a flurry of elbows to his assailant's gut. The drunk puked all over Boomer's side and the floor as they rolled to a halt against the wall. Boomer stood and one of the sober guards kicked him flush in the stomach. Now it was Boomer's turn to puke but not before he realized he was probably going to have to fight the entire room for a Terminator.

Out of nowhere Twelve was surging through the crowd and hurling men aside like they were matchsticks. Some fool, thinking it was another bar patron, turned with a vicious haymaker. Twelve blocked the punch with a forearm and there was an audible crack as the man's hand met Twelve's wrist. The other drunks caught on then and the room cleared out except for those rendered unable to do so by either Twelve or Boomer.

"Why didn't you do that when they were frying you?" Boomer asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist.

"They never posed a serious threat to this unit. They did pose a substantial threat to you, Sergeant Redman, and my assignment is to keep your life functions at a sustainable level." Twelve cocked her head and gave Boomer a grin he would have recognized as his own if he hadn't been suffering from a hangover.

Boomer looked up at the diminutive killing machine solemnly before activating his wrist-com, "This is Sergeant Redman requesting immediate pick-up."

The figures moaning piteously, the man with the broken hand was shrieking at the top of his lungs, drew Boomer's attention.

"And a med-team."

* * *

Twenty-seven hours later Boomer found himself at TechCom's primary research facility in Alaska. He had been loaded onto a Tau dropship with Twelve and only two hours later had been deep in the wilds of Alaska. It could be a harsh place; Boomer had been there once before the Hegemony invasion, but it was definitely breath taking. The facility had been a Department of Defense operation pre-Judgement Day and half of it was located deep underground. The surface complex was sprawling enough, covering nearly five square kilometers with research buildings and testing grounds, without the six sub-levels that covered nearly as much territory. It had surprised Boomer how loath he was to separate himself from Twelve once they had touched down. Boomer had at first been taken through the Medical portion of the base where he had gone through rapid detoxification procedures. A decontamination shower, a bath, and then ten hours of uninterrupted sleep in a small barracks had followed the detox.

Boomer opened his eyes and tried to shake the cobwebs out of his head.

"What the hell have I been eating?" he mumbled, yawning hugely and starting slightly at the discovery that he was clothed only in a pair of skintight shorts.

"From what Twelve has told me," a familiar voice said from his left, "Not much of anything."

Boomer turned and got his first really good look at a Tau Fire Warrior outside of his armor. The Tau wore shorts akin to Boomer's and it was with some surprise that Boomer realized the Fire Warrior didn't have a nose.

"You don't have a nose," he blurted out unintentionally.

The Fire Warrior laughed, "Yet my sense of smell is probably three times better than yours."

Boomer grinned, "You're Templar aren't you?"

Templar nodded, "Yes I am, Boomer, but it is a name I adopted after my homeworld was destroyed."

Templar's face fell some then and a look of introspection fell across his features. Boomer couldn't help but study the Fire Warrior as he sat in the cot next to him. He had blue-gray skin and deep-set eyes that might have been dark gray or brown. His nasal cavity almost perfectly bisected his face and it was then that Boomer noticed Templar also didn't have ears that he could see. Templar idly lifted a foot to scratch it and Boomer yelped as he got a good look.

Templar turned to face him again, "Is something the matter, sergeant?"

"Y-y-you've got hooves!"

High, girlish laughter filled the room from Boomer's other side and he turned to goggle at Twelve. The Terminator's face was expressionless but what made Boomer goggle was the fact that she was topless and only wore shorts similar to the ones Boomer was wearing.

"Was that not the appropriate response to Sergeant Redman's declaration, shas'el?" Twelve asked Templar, her face as expressionless as ever.

Templar laughed, "Yes, it was Twelve. Maybe you should cover your chest. The sergeant seems to find it distracting."

Boomer turned away but not before he could see Twelve growing an almost sheer breast-band.

"Haven't you ever seen a Tau up-close, sergeant?" Templar asked.

"Yes, but I always thought it was just some kind of odd footwear. I never thought you guys actually had hooves."

Templar shrugged, "I have seen species that crawled on their bellies like slugs as they attempted to eat me alive."

The room lapsed into silence as Boomer digested that nugget of information. The three soldiers were in a small barracks with only six bunks and a small communal bathroom. There were no board games, not even a deck of cards, to take their minds off of what they had signed up for so naturally Boomer asked the one who would know the most.

"Hey, Twelve," Boomer stopped, another thought overriding his original question, "Maybe you should think of a name. I feel weird calling you Twelve all the time."

"What name do you suggest, sergeant?" the machine asked in a slightly perplexed voice.

"Whatever name you think suits you. I'm sure you've got hundreds in your databanks," Boomer grinned, "Speaking of databanks. Do you have any idea what this Operation: Triad is supposed to be all about."

"I apologize, Sergeant Redman, but my ether-link with SkyNet has been temporarily disconnected. That project is classified at Alpha-Black and my security clearance was not high enough upon reassignment to the project."

Boomer fumed, anger rising quickly, before he stamped it down with effort. Just then a cart piled with foodstuffs was pushed into the room by a pair of white-coats. The pair, two non-descript white men wearing heavy glasses, dropped the carts off, scribbled on their charts and promptly left the room via the double doors at the opposite end. Templar looked at Boomer and the TechCom sergeant shrugged before hopping off the bed in the direction of the cart that looked like it was for him. It was a veritable feast the likes of which Boomer had never had. Every kind of foodstuff he had ever eaten was represented, which really wasn't much, and many others he had only heard about through older survivors. The pancakes were as good as his TechCom drill instructors had said they were and the syrup that covered them was even better. Boomer didn't even use a plate and simply ate right off the trays whatever food caught his eye. Templar was more sedate and organized his food, a cornucopia of colors that made Boomer slightly nauseous even to glance at it, on a single plate. The veteran Fire Warrior brought his plate and glass to his cot where he ate as though he were at a state function. Twelve simply sat, reviewing the millions of permutations of names she had in her databanks, while subconsciously observing her organic teammates behavior for assimilation into her emulator. Once Templar and Boomer had their fill they lay back on their bunks.

"So…" Boomer began, trying to find a topic of conversation, "Where's everybody from?"

"I was manufactured at Automated Weapons Factory D-Four-Five-One-Three," Twelve answered promptly.

"I was born on a small colony on the outskirts of Tau Imperial space. What about you, Boomer?"

"I don't really know. My first memory is of my mother running away, holding me close, and the sounds of men chasing her. She died a year later and I never knew who my father was or where I was born."

"What happened then?" Templar asked, and that was how each of the three began to tell the stories of their lives.

Several hours later, only a short time after Templar had begun to speak, the two white-coats came back with a Tau between them. This Tau was subtly different from Templar in coloration and body structure. The new Tau was more earth-toned and shorter. He also seemed much more muscular than Templar despite the fact that he looked as much a geek as his human counterparts. It was easy to see that Templar moved like a predator whereas this Tau moved with much less confidence.

"Sergeant Redman, you will accompany me for your preliminary tests," the lead human, a gangly man with scraggly gray-brown hair and dark brown eyes under bushy brows said.

The Tau took Templar and the other human took Twelve. The three looked at each other before all three shrugged in eerily similar gestures. Their three guides scribbled furiously on their charts as they exited the room. Boomer was taken through a series of medical tests, most of which he only had a vague idea of what they were supposed to check, but he submitted to them all. The final piece of diagnostic equipment that was used on him was a cylindrical tube that they slid him into like a corpse. Boomer's face was uncovered but he almost panicked when the tube shrank around him and what felt like a million tiny probes were injected into his skin. They had placed a broad circle covered in sensor nodes around his head once he had calmed down somewhat. It seemed like hours passed while his muscles contracted, sometimes painfully, of their own volition. When it was over Boomer was helped back to the barracks by two white-coats. His muscles had never felt this wrung out even during P.T. when he was in basic training.

Templar had already finished his tests and was laying motionless on his back as Boomer flopped into his bed.

"They put you in a tube?" Boomer asked, as he settled into a more comfortable position.

"Yes. I take it you received the same treatment?"

"Yeah. I feel used like a baseball bat."

"Baseball?"

"A game humans used to play. Real popular. That reminds me. You sounded a little different than on the ship. Were you talking English then?"

Templar laughed, "No. The SFE's were built with a universal translator."

"Then how come I can understand you now?"

"The language was in my head, didatic memory nanytes, and it just took a little practice to get better at it. All Tau are now expected to spend at least two… hours a…" Templar seemed to have trouble converting Tau systems of measurement to human and Boomer couldn't blame him. Boomer still had trouble converting to the metric system. "-day speaking the primary language of this world."

"What the hell's a nanyte?"

"A machine smaller than a blood cell."

The two soldiers turned as the doors to the barracks opened to reveal Twelve and her white-coat escort. Behind the escort marched a single T-850. Twelve was being wheeled in on a large metallic stretcher.

"What happened to you, Twelve?" Boomer asked as the T-850 deposited the smaller Terminator unit on the bunk to Boomer's left.

"Technicians were testing the power output of my servomotors. At one hundred, seventy-five point six-two percent the servomotors in my legs initiated automatic shutdown. That shutdown resulted in cascade failure in all of my servomotors. This failure was not foreseen when the original code for auto-shutdown was written."

"They did not repair you?" Templar asked curiously.

"Negative. My servomotors will reactivate in approximately seven minutes and sixteen seconds."

There were several more moments of silence before Boomer could stand it no longer.

"Templar, what were you saying before they wrung us out? Something about a campaign against ogres? "

Templar chuckled, "No, Boomer, the human term for the species is ork. It was the Trial by Fire where I was to gain the lowest rank of a line Fire Warrior. They were attacking one of the empire's fledgling colonies and we had been sent to drive them back. I've been as afraid as that day several times in my life but the first time you feel it is a unique experience. We touched down-"

* * *

Boomer floated in a cylindrical tank filled with a viscous, transparent fluid with a breathing mask on his face. Surrounding the tank were computer consoles manned by earth caste Tau and humans in their brilliantly white labcoats. At least the pain had finally stopped. The last two days had been filled with lectures about the inherent risks involved in the project as well as an endless schedule of protein supplement, antibiotic, and nanyte injections meant to prepare him for the primary treatment. It had been some shock to realize that he was being used as the first test subject for not one but two experiments. Today was the big day. Templar and Twelve, she still had not chosen a name, had been separated from him for their own enhancement procedures. Twelve was probably undergoing the least risky procedure even though he had heard a tech say they were going to replace her cranium and transfer her A.I. code to an improved neural net chip. Boomer could imagine any number of things that could go wrong with that operation alone.

"We are ready to begin, sergeant," the woman who was in charge of the human portion of Project: Evolution told him through the speakers implanted in the tank.

The fluid absorbed most of the sound but he gave her a thumb's up.

A heavy lethargy slowly overtook him and then he ponderously blinked.

When his eyes opened again it was as if the world were in slow motion. He was convulsing, Boomer could just make out his fist convulsively striking the clear material that made up the tank, but everything else was moving as though he were watching a slow-motion replay of battle footage.

_Good god, look at him go. The suspension should be preventing any sudden movement. How the hell is he doing that!_

The thought was another's, Boomer knew that instantly, and he thought it was one of the lab technicians.

"Somebody get HS nanytes into his motor cortex, stat! Don't stand there gawking! Give me that control! Stamniski, not the cardiac-specialized nanytes, you jackass! Hurry before he gets permanent brain damage!" Dr. Yurikov took command decisively and Boomer blinked again.

This time when he opened his eyes it was all moving at normal speed. The liquid around him was a terrifying shade of red but everything was moving as it should have been. There was also pain that made Boomer snarl like a beast through his breath mask. He struggled to take the mask off and looked down to discover heavy alloy manacles restrained his arms. They hadn't been there before but with a fierce glare something in his head flared to life. Thick streams of blood floated up before his face but all that mattered was the manacles releasing. There was a flash of light and the manacle on his left arm burst into a million tiny fragments. Again voice/thoughts came to him through the transparent alloy.

_Jesus, look at those EEG readings!_

_I hope he doesn't get out 'cause he looks pissed._

_There he goes again and I was gonna get laid tonight, damnit._

"Triple the sedative dose! Administer five hundred CC's of coagulant accelerant! Hurry or he'll bleed out! "

Boomer blinked again and when he opened his eyes he was looking up at the bright overheads of the underground barracks they had been moved to after their preliminary tests. Every part of his body ached and it felt like a million machines were connected to him. He also felt slightly… wrong. His vision was blurry but he could hear and smell things he had never imagined. Boomer knew there were at least seven people in the room and it was filled with machinery. Boomer turned his head to his left and saw Templar wrapped head-to-toe in some kind of elastic bandage. Large spots of blue, his blood Boomer knew, had soaked through the bandages along his arms, legs, and torso. To the right Twelve stood as immobile as a statue looking right at Boomer. There was nothing in her eyes though and that bothered Boomer more than he would ever admit.

"He's awake, sir," someone said and the wavering outline of a human in gray-green fatigues appeared above him.

"I'm glad to see you made it, soldier."

"General Conner, sir!" Boomer tried to raise a hand to salute but found that he was restrained from doing so.

When he tried there was a screech of bending metal. Boomer looked down and was a little confused at the restraint on his right wrist. The shackle's chain only had one regulation length link on it while the rest had been stretched almost to the breaking point.

"There's no need for that, Boomer. Hell, I should be saluting you."

Boomer chuckled as he gently eased his arm down.

"I can't see that well, sir."

General Conner hesitated before answering, "Well, your eyes are bleeding, Boomer. So're your ears and nose. Doc's'll have that fixed in no time."

Someone put something liquid and soothing in his eyes that cleared them up. He saw that Captain Perry was standing beside General Conner. A Tau Ethereal and another Fire Warrior were standing at the foot of an unconscious Templar's bed. A T-X unit sat immobile on Twelve's bunk with a hand in the small of Boomer's partner's back.

I can't have a fakie for a partner; the squad would never let him forget it.

"You should get some rest, son. The doctor's say you need it."

"Yeah," Captain Perry spoke up in his gravelly, deep voice, "You've got lots of training to get to after you get over this bug."

"Are those orders, sirs?"

"Yes."

"You'd better not ask that again."

Boomer fell back into a deep slumber with a wide grin on his face.

**

* * *

**

"Are they going to make it?" Captain Perry asked the three heads of Project: Evolution.

Doctor Yurikov was a woman in her sixties that had somehow managed to live through Judgement Day, the Machine-Human War, and the Hegemony Invasion. She was tall, thin, and had very stern gray eyes. She was in charge of the Terran division of the project and the last week had been harrowing if the wild strands of gray hair protruding from her normally neat bun were any indication. Her human counterpart was in charge of the Terminator division and was relatively young, in his forties, with an even more youthful face. Doctor Stone was tall, thin, and had a perpetually focused air. It was a trait most of the scientists under the employ of Sci/Tech had. The dark circles under his already dark brown skin gave testament to the fact that the week had not gone well for him either. Fio'o Vran'ti was the only one of the three that still looked excited but even his bland earth caste features seemed tired.

"I think I can speak for us all here," Yurikov said with a slight Russian accent. She continued when the others nodded their approval. "They will make it but it was close. T-X Unit Oh-One-Two, Twelve as Sergeant Redman and Shas'el Templar call her, almost blew up the entire complex when we tried to install her new power core. Both Sergeant Redman and Shas'el Templar were clinically dead multiple times during the re-sequencing."

"Is that supposed to give us confidence?" Shas'O Kais asked.

Kais, Perry, and TX-002 sat with the project heads at a long rectangular table in the primary conference room for this level. Perry fixed each of the scientists with a stare that said he was in total agreement with the Fire Warrior.

"That was only to give you an idea of the ordeal they have gone through. With the data we have gathered, and will continue to gather, we are sure we can eventually minimize the risks to less than a one percent mortality rate." Fio'o Vran'ti came to his colleague's defense.

"Once they passed the critical stage, the two organic members of the test subjects began to recover at an extraordinary rate," Doctor Yurikov began again, "The epidermal tearing that Shas'el Templar experienced has healed at nearly ten times the normal rate of a Tau Fire Warrior without the benefit of medical nanytes. Sergeant Redman's rate of cerebral hemorrhaging has regressed at what I would have considered an impossible rate before I joined this project. I don't know why Unit Oh-One-Two is not responding to her start up code."

"That unit is going through millions of permutations of names at the request of Sergeant Redman," TX-002 told them, "Once the other two regain consciousness she will self-activate. I just said she. I just said I."

Then, much to the surprise of everyone at the table, the Terminator started giggling uncontrollably.

**

* * *

**

Boomer stretched slowly at the starting line of the obstacle course the doctors wanted the three of them to run. The team was dressed in identical blue-green bodysuits festooned with lightweight sensor pads that only Khory, the uncommon name that TX-012 had decided on, could detect. Templar had been the first to wake up and actually stay awake for longer than a few minutes. Khory had booted up a short time later and, almost excitedly, told the Fire Warrior the name she had chosen. The Terminator's voice had awoken Redman and he had been secretly relieved to see them both conscious.

The following week had been spent eating copious amounts of protein-laden meals, diagnostic tests for all three, and light exercises. The out-of-body feeling that Boomer and Templar had first experienced had gradually begun to fade but the evidence that they were the subjects of an experiment was plain for anyone to see. Boomer had grown six centimeters taller and Templar, who had been only slightly taller than Boomer, had grown a dozen. Boomer's physique had filled out a little more than before, but that could have been due to the fact that he was malnourished for the better portion of his life. Templar had the musculature of a jungle cat and he moved with the heavy grace of one. Even Khory's exoskeleton was larger now to accommodate all of her modifications. She and Boomer were now about the same height and Templar was not really much taller. None of them would be a match for a Paladin in stature but they had closed the gap a little. Templar's skin had changed from a gray-blue to an almost iridescent shade of red. The exterior was soft but felt like it only covered up a very hard substance underneath. The Tau's eyes were less sunken in his head but at least they had stayed the same color.

"You guys," Khory shot Boomer a look she had learned from Templar, "It's a figure of speech, Khory, damnit. Why am I always getting my chops busted around here? I could be somewhere sippin' martini's or something."

"What the hell's a martini?" Templar asked, looking up from his own calisthenics.

"An alcoholic beverage," Khory supplied, observing the wide corridor they were expected to run in less than a minute.

It was exactly four hundred and fifty-seven meters in length and she doubted if her organic comrades could do it. She had already made the decision not to leave them behind no matter what the penalty might be. At the end of the corridor was a wall ten meters high. A bar was located five meters above the floor two meters in front of the wall. There was a small platform in the center of the bar and another bar three meters above the platform.

"We're ready to go when you guys are," the voice of a lab technician addressed them over the P.A. system.

"We'll let Boomer dictate the pace, Khory," Templar said, his voice not as commanding as it once had been, but Boomer thought it didn't need to be. The Fire Warrior was older than he and Khory, had seen far more engagements than they had, and was technically an officer despite the blossoming camaraderie between the three.

"Affirmative," Boomer fixed her with his own look, "I meant to say; no problem."

Boomer grinned as Templar gave the hidden camera the thumbs-up gesture. A bullhorn blasted them from nowhere; making Templar and Boomer wince painfully due to their newly sensitive hearing, but Boomer shot off like a rabbit regardless. His acceleration was so great that he was nearly ten meters ahead of them when Khory and Templar started. They easily caught up though and together they came to the wall.

"Time, Khory," Templar said, his breath coming easily to his vast surprise and pleasure.

"Thirty-nine point three-five seconds."

"Can you make that jump straight up, Khory?" Templar asked, eyeing the obstacle.

"Unknown. I will make the attempt now."

Khory walked briskly over to stand next to the wall. She bent her knees partially and sprang upward in a flash of blue-green jumpsuit. Khory hit the ceiling, nearly fifteen meters up, with a metallic clang before gracefully flipping in the air to land on the level above them.

"Extend me your hand as far as it will go," Templar told her and Khory promptly slid to her belly beside the drop.

Her arm extended a meter but her polymimetic skin stayed fixed to her hand.

"SkyNet has forbidden me to use my shifting abilities. Can you make the jump, Templar?"

Templar looked at Boomer and shrugged. He moved to a position similar to the one Khory had assumed and bent until his butt almost touched the floor. Templar pushed off the ground with all his might and hit the ceiling hard enough to crack the concrete. He was so stunned that Khory had to snag him around the ankle as he fell headfirst to the ground.

"You alright?" Boomer asked worriedly, wincing at how huge the crack in the ceiling was.

"Fine," Templar replied as if he could scarcely believe he was uninjured. "Can you reach my hand?"

Boomer shrugged, "I'll give it a shot."

Boomer crouched in the same manner as Templar had and pushed off with all his might. His fingers barely brushed Templar's before he hit the floor. It was somewhat embarrassing that the others so easily jumped ten meters straight up and Boomer couldn't even stretch his fingers to reach a little over seven meters up the wall. His vertical jump, at least three meters by his calculations, was probably the highest of any human on the planet but it was still slightly humiliating. Boomer gave forth the tiny bit of extra effort and he managed to firmly grasp Templar's four-fingered hand. Khory effortlessly hoisted them to the next level.

The three stood without a word and looked towards the next obstacle. It had been described to them so they knew what they had to do. Three panels, two meters tall, rested in tracks in the floor. They had to push the panels together to the other end of the room while the technicians monitoring their exercises increased the weight of each panel. As they approached Boomer noted with some dismay that he and Templar's panels already said sixty kilos. Khory's digital display read at a thousand kilograms.

"On my count," Templar said as each placed their palms in the indentations already on the panels. "One, two, one-"

Together they pushed the panels forward and slowly the kilo count on each of theirs increased. Boomer was sweating and trembling slightly by the time the panel reached two hundred and sixty kilograms. Thankfully his stopped at three hundred kilograms but he watched with awe as Templar and Khory's kept rising. Templar began having trouble at five hundred kilograms and Khory's servomotors began to make audible noise at five thousand kilograms. Both of theirs stopped a short while after that. By this time they were only halfway down the hall. They only had five more meters to go when the strain became too much for Boomer. The panels were connected and the two wings began to bend when Boomer didn't raise his foot on the next count.

"I can't do it guys," then the digital counter on his panel lowered by twenty kilograms.

The beating drum of his heart in his ears as he cleared the last five meters was not enough to drown out his shame at not being as tough as his comrades. A part of Boomer accepted the fact that he was only human and his comrades were definitely not but he was no less cutting in his self-recrimination. Khory and Templar recovered in less than a minute after the strain and Boomer recovered shortly after. Even his quick recovery was not enough to make him forget about his failure in the last obstacle.

"Come on, Boomer," Templar said, together he and Khory helped the sergeant to his feet. "Last one to go and then we can get something to eat."

"Yeah, that sounds good," Boomer replied, tonelessly.

The three rounded a corner and into a room out of a D.I.'s wet dream. It was a cacophony of cushioned pylons that rolled in random patterns in tracks along the floor, padded pistons that shot from the walls, electric stun rounds buzzed their way across the room from every direction, trap doors opened at random places on the floor. It was fifteen meters by fifteen meters of pure hell.

All they had to do was get one person across the room to hit the trigger than would deactivate all the traps.

"Any ideas, Templar?" Boomer asked, his voice as detached as he could make it.

"None. You?"

"Nada."

"Khory?"

"There is a route with a sixty-seven point three percent chance of success. I believe I am fast enough to do it."

"Go for it, Khory."

The Terminator darted out onto the floor so fast that Boomer's eyes could barely keep up. She dodged, rolled, and flipped through the course. Ten meters in she must have hit a trip-line, or stepped on a hidden trigger, because four automated stun turrets homed in on her.

"Back, back, back, back!" Templar shouted, and Khory instantly complied.

By the time she made it back several rounds had caught her in the back and sides. Khory's hands twitched uncontrollably for several seconds while she looked at them with a frown of concentration.

"Those were ion bolts."

"I'll try this time," Templar offered and he only made it five meters before stepping too close to the left wall.

A piston shot out and jabbed him squarely in the ribs. Templar rubbed his side as if it had been a mild ache while the piston couldn't retract into the wall because it had bent slightly from the force of the impact. Templar's hesitation cost him when a pylon whipped into him so hard he bounced back into a trap door. He sprang out of it seconds before it closed and rolled his way back to Boomer and Khory.

"You okay?" Boomer asked, helping the Fire Warrior to his feet.

"Fine. Frustrated but okay."

"I guess it's my turn."

"Maybe we should give this some more time?" Templar suggested, gripping Boomer by the bicep. "That piston could have broken my ribs and those stun rounds did a number on Khory."

Boomer snarled, "Are you saying I'm weak or something? That I can't hack it?"

"No, no, but-"

"Then I'm going," Boomer said, roughly disengaging his arm from Templar.

Boomer was so focused on getting across the room that he didn't notice that everything had slowed down again. He dodged every pylon, even jumped off a piston as it shot from a wall to block his way, nimbly avoided the automated gun triggers at the ten meter mark, and jumped the last three meters to the end as a trap door opened beneath his very feet. He pressed the button ending the exercise and the world sped up again.

"How'd you do that?" Templar asked, his eyes wide as he walked across the almost unnaturally calm room.

"I just did it?" Boomer said, shrugging expressively.

"But you weren't moving faster than Khory or I. You just avoided everything. Even when stun rounds were coming at your back you dodged them. How did you do that?"

"Boomer, your nose is bleeding." Khory said, stepping closer to Boomer as though he might faint any minute.

Boomer put a hand to his nose and encountered a warm stickiness that seemed to be gushing like a geyser.

"Hmmph," he grunted just before he lost consciousness.

* * *

General Perry, newly promoted to head of the Special Forces Division of the Trinity Interstellar Marine Corps., stepped into the observation booth from which the three heads of Project: Evolution were watching their charges. It had been nearly two weeks since he had last visited this project. His new title and rank had required him to spend his time between this and general special weapons projects for his division. The room was ovular with a large screen opposite the door he had entered by. Technicians were stationed at seven terminals inside a niche in the center of the floor. Perry walked around this niche to where the three scientists were watching furiously fast activity on the main viewscreen. The general noted with some amusement how quickly the scientists and staff operating this base had become used to clean living. He idly wondered if any of them resented the Tau drones that accomplished much of it. Perry himself often had to remember not to frown suspiciously at the little bastards as they went about their business.

"General Perry," Yurikov turned to face him and nod before turning back to the screen. The other two were so engrossed in monitoring their portable datapads and the screen that he doubted they would have noticed if someone had detonated a fusion charge in the center of the room.

"Doctor," he greeted her, searching for what had caught their attention on the screen.

Sergeant Redman, the Terminator, and Shas'el Templar were in a small gymnasium bare of anything but a practice mat. Redman and Templar were engaged in furious combat, armed with only stun batons, against the similarly armed T-X unit.

"That hardly seems fair, does it?" Perry asked, knowing from experience how terribly powerful the new Terminator models were. It was almost impossible to beat them with a plasma baton unlike the older T-800's.

The three chuckled slightly as he said that.

"Watch," Yurikov suggested, bending over slightly to better see a reading she was getting from the console below her.

Perry did watch as the Fire Warrior punched the Terminator in the gut. His eyes almost bulged out of his head when the Terminator was lifted at least two meters off its feet. In retaliation the T-X snapped a knee viciously into the Tau's chin. Templar flipped in the air and landed hard on his belly. Perry would have said he was out of the fight but the Fire Warrior was back on his feet almost instantly. Something flew through the air and kicked the Terminator in the back while it was still in mid-air. The Terminator flew toward a waiting Templar but was not out of surprises. TX-012 flipped in mid-flight, avoiding a swing of the stun baton that would have probably tossed it aside like a baseball, and cupped Templar's chin from behind his back. The two's bodies sprang out as the Terminator's momentum was arrested by Templar. They hit the mat hard and TX-012 was the first up. Boomer ran at her and swung his baton with blinding speed. The Terminator swayed to the side, grabbed Boomer's outstretched arm, swung him around once, and then launched him into the air to land with bone-breaking force five meters away. Perry was about to chew into the scientists when Boomer rolled away as the Terminator landed where he had been a second before after jumping the five-meter long gap between them.

"As you can see the re-sequencing is a resounding success," Yurikov entered in commands on her console and a small window popped up at the foot of the screen.

Perry watched the trio's performance on the small obstacle course that had been set up for their initial trials. It was hard to believe what he was seeing and Boomer's performance left him speechless.

"TX-Oh-One-Two, Khory was the name she finally chose by the way, is operating at approximately three hundred percent above her previous combat efficiency. We've upgraded everything from her power core to her behavioral emulator. Sergeant Redman has seen significant improvements in his physical and mental capabilities. As you saw he has demonstrated a degree of psionic potential." Yurikov paused before continuing in a more quiet voice, "He almost died from extensive cerebral hemorrhaging after completing that obstacle course. He was out of danger by the time our medical team got to him though. Redman's healing capabilities are far more efficient and effective than a normal human. O'Vran'ti?"

"Templar has undergone the most physically dramatic transformation. We have seen an increase in his physical capabilities that we are still attempting to properly gauge. His sub-dermal layer has the durability of some of our weaker inorganic alloys and his bones are composed of a substance we have yet to identify. It is a compound made up of over ten different elements in a composition that I thought was impossible in a Tau. His mental facilities are generally improved and I believe he is somewhat more open to the human's influence than he was before the re-sequencing. But what really excites us is that Templar's cellular regeneration has achieved an efficiency rate so high that we believe the aging process has slowed down by nearly seventy-five percent."

"So they're ready for Project: Triad," Perry interrupted before he could be regaled with even more technical jargon.

Yurikov turned to him with a small, slightly condescending, grin, "Those eggheads in Triad will mess themselves when they see what we've got for them."

**

* * *

**

Boomer touched the metal circle nested at the base of his skull with a slight shudder as the elevator slowly descended into the interior of the base. He, Templar, and Khory were being escorted by Doctor Markin, a bald, thin, sixty-something, black man who was the head of Project: Triad, to the experimental weapons lab. This time they had been allowed to dress in black fatigues and Boomer felt strange after going so long wearing relatively skimpy attire.

Boomer had just gotten used to the new body Project: Evolution had given him when his team had been given to Project: Triad without a second glance. Another week of increasingly intense physical training, mental and psychological evaluations had followed. Then the time had come for their artificial enhancements. Boomer and Templar had gone through the surgeries, Boomer more so than Templar as the Tau needed little in the way of physical enhancements, while Khory had been given several new upgrades to her combat processor that the Triad scientists had designed. There had been much less pain after the Triad surgery and they had been back on their feet after only forty-eight hours. Boomer only had received a nanyte treatment that strengthened his bones by adding inorganic compounds into the matrix itself. Templar's bones were already significantly stronger than they had been and the Triad scientists had decided it was better to leave them alone since they still had no idea just how the Tau's bones had been created. Boomer and Templar had each received ocular implants that gave them a range of vision almost as varied as Khory's. Nanytes coursed through their bodies in hordes making their biological processes even more efficient than the genetic re-sequencing had done. Thanks to Project: Evolution the nanytes could push Templar's and Boomer's bodies to further extremes than would have been safe for normal humans or fire caste. Their reflexes, speed, strength, hand-eye coordination, just about everything they did had improved significantly even from after their participation in Project: Evolution. The cybernetic enhancement that Boomer had minded the most was a contact-neural-interface-jack they had implanted at the base of his skull. They had said he and Templar's brains were configured differently than the Triad scientists had been prepared for and they were not confident enough to do anything more than allow them the less intrusive, and far less efficient, CNI.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened at the bottom of the lift. This far into the base security was light and only a pair of T-850's guarded the elevator doors. Doctor Markin passed them without a moment's glance and went down the long, empty corridor that ended in a door marked as 'Experimental Weapons Research Lab One'. Dr. Markin continued his march and the doors opened a second before he struck them.

"I've got to get that fixed," he said, absently," Sometimes I think SkyNet wanted someone to run into the door when it made that code."

Boomer shot Templar and Khory a look that made them both smile. It amazed Boomer how easily Khory was picking up organic mannerisms and it was a little unnerving that she picked most of them up from him and Templar. The lab had a high, vaulted ceiling and was absolutely cavernous. It was divided into large blocks that were either divided up into sections or were used as test ranges. Dr. Markin led them straight down the middle corridor, past walls where all manner of noises were coming from, to a door marked as Lab Two. Again the door didn't open until the doctor was almost through. Lab Two was smaller but had a large open area that was obviously used for weapons testing. Low barricades, twisted skeletal remains of targets, and black scorch marks left no doubt. Set just in front of the test range was a table with several unfamiliar and familiar weapons on it. Standing in front of them was a militant looking researcher that Boomer figured had been in Sci/Tech for a long time.

"Lieutenant Hudson will provide a demonstration of the weapons that will be available to you as a Triad squad. Lieutenant," Dr. Markin said.

Lieutenant Hudson was a short, slender man with gray hair and brown eyes. He nodded to the doctor and picked up the weapon that looked like a plasma carbine.

"This is a plasma carbine, version five," Boomer gave him a disbelieving glance, "Yes, I meant five. We have several version designs that proved unsuitable for the work you will be doing. Those were given to other R&D divisions. Version five fires bolts of concentrated plasma with the equivalent mega-joule charge of a Covenant shade emplacement. An independent miniature power core, much like the one in Oh-One- I meant to say Khory," he finished after each of them glared at the scientist, "–has been added to the weapon so the odds of the weapon running out of ammo are astronomically low. A holo-cam mounted in the sight allows for remote firing once you have linked it to your battle-suits HUD's."

Hudson set his sights on a Hunter shield and depressed the trigger. Searing balls of plasma were ejected from the weapon's muzzle at twenty rounds a second. It only took half a minute of firing before the Hunter's shield had grown a molten hole in its center.

"Version five also has four secondary weapon modules besides the under-barrel multi-type grenade launcher. Rail-rifle mode." Hudson quickly and methodically added a mini-electromagnet firing prong to the barrel and slipped a small clip into the side of the weapon near the forward grip. He fired and the slowly cooling hole in the center of the shield blew outward in semi-molten chunks. "A mini-rocket, R-7 PAK size, launcher," this time the lieutenant replaced the entire under-barrel grenade launcher with a longer, bulkier device. A target of a Covenant Wraith appeared two hundred meters down-range and the lieutenant fired. The detonation was slightly less powerful than a Boom-Stick but not by much. "A particle cannon attachment." This time the process took nearly thirty seconds and the carbine barely looked the same. Two Hunter shields popped out of the floor in a row. Hudson pressed the firing stud and a wide beam of crackling white light blew both shields into sparkling motes of light. "And a spotter for artillery and orbital bombardment."

"Next is the Individual Multi-Purpose Plasma Cannon," Hudson strained to pick up the huge weapon that looked larger than his entire body, " It's meant to be used by Terminators and is difficult for Tau or humans to handle comfortably. It has all the bells and whistles of the carbine but with a two hundred percent increase in destructive capability."

Hudson set the cannon down and picked up a thick cylinder.

"Might as well show them the upgraded Tau Plasma Blade as well."

Hudson nodded and picked up the Tau short sword that Templar always praised. The lieutenant went out onto the testing range and what looked like a razor thin energy whip appeared from the handle.

"The particle whip emits a thin particle beam capable of slicing through all but the densest alloys. There are materials that are resistant to molecular dissolution, and a full list is given in the training manual. The Tau Plasma Blade has been given an upgrade that switches its plasma sheath to a microscopic one of particle energy. This upgrade gives the blade phenomenal penetration."

Hudson deactivated the whip and toggled the plasma blade. He sliced across the chest of an armored Brute and the blade merely scored the metal. Then the visible corona of plasma energy disappeared and Hudson swung again. The entire upper body of the Brute figure fell to the floor.

"Follow me and I'll show you the armor we have designed for your Triad."

Dr. Markin passed through a door labeled as Lab Three where technicians studied schematics as well as pieces of sophisticated components that only Khory had any chance of recognizing. This Lab was smaller than the other two but not by much. The next room was even smaller inside sat three full suits of Exoskeletal armor. One set of armor was over two meters tall. Each set of armor was intricately muscled as though they were living beings. The helmets were the same featureless ones as SFE, V1's, only slightly more tear-drop shaped.

"These are prototype Triad BattleSuits." A holo-projection of the three suits of armor slowly walking through a battlefield appeared in front of them, "Each such is composed of multiple layers of microthin armor. The feature I'm most proud of is the artificial Exoskeletal musculature. There is not a single servomotor present in the battlesuits designed for organic use. Once properly connected the enervation of your muscle tissue will transfer directly to the suit's giving you a potential three hundred percent increase in strength and speed." The images on the screen tossed aside their enemies like they were rag-dolls and the largest suit even hurled aside the image of a Covenant Wraith like it was nothing. "Khory's is the largest suit, which was partially based off of Crisis BattleSuit technology, and is equipped with heavy-duty servomotors. Dual-layered shielding provides excellent protection from all but the most powerful of Covenant infantry weaponry. Your CNI implants will allow you to command the suits with your thoughts, completely eliminating the need for gauntlet computer pads. They still are a part of the suit but will be rendered as a back-up system. The standard battle-suit is capable of carrying enough ammunition for your various weapon attachments to last through several separate engagements without resupply. There are also numerous equipment slots for an additional fifteen kilograms of weight. An anti-gravity thruster on each boot as well as at each hip will allow rapid-transport across a combat zone."

Now the hologram had the three suits making fantastic leaps over a battlefield spewing death from each arm, the largest even had shoulder-mounted missile pods, and Boomer couldn't help but to feel a tiny twinge of excitement.

"Boomer and Templar's suits are capable of having an A.I. construct, purely code unlike Khory, partner their battlesuit with them," Boomer shot the scientist a look, "Only by their request of course. The suits do not require an A.I. construct to function but the construct would optimize efficiency. There are a myriad of other technical enhancements over the ones you three may be used to and they are available for review. I have one question first. Who wants to try theirs first?"

Each of them stepped forward at the same time.


	11. Overlooked Enemies

Captain Catherine Luna crawled on her belly to the edge of the bluff, breath low and controlled in the close confines of her helmet, and wondered how she managed to get herself into these kinds of situations.

Luna had been placed in command of an entire hunter-cadre of Marine Pathfinders; the division had replaced TechCom I.D. but the purpose remained the same. It never ceased to strike her as funny that she, at her best when working alone, had become responsible for one hundred and forty-four men, Tau, and Terminators. Perry and General Conner believed in her abilities though and she would do her best not to disappoint them. Her best had proven well enough so far to hold the company together but sometimes it was a struggle. I.D. agents had always been notoriously isolationist in their habits and to be assigned partners was hard on them. At first General Conner had tried to institute random selections of teams, resulting in combinations of the three species represented in the ISMC, but that had not worked out well in the end. Former TechCom soldiers found working closely with Terminators, even Terminators nearly indistinguishable from their own, intolerable. Working with Tau provided less friction but the humans still found it difficult to work with the aliens. In the end General Leland, commander of the Pathfinder division, had organized his force to be integrated at the squad level and no further. Each squad was made up of two-man Pathfinder teams of humans, Tau, and Terminators that were always partnered with their own species. In the fledgling battledome, a Tau training facility that General Conner and SkyNet were in love with, this structure had worked the best.

This was Luna's first deployment with her cadre and it was providing two services to the division. Testing the cadre's cohesion out in the field and field-testing the new armor Sci/Tech R&D had come up with. The armor was not a full body exoskeleton but it did have shield systems powered by a backpack power core. Each piece of Luna that was not covered by her armor was protected by an incredibly tough, flexible bodysuit. Her helmet came with a full range of functions; a full dozen only available to shas'ui's and up, and could be sealed up in case she was temporarily exposed to vacuum. There was even a shoulder-mounted tagging device that would automatically take the coordinates of whatever enemy installation she designated and send them to the prototype Pathfinder gunship, the_ Vegas_, in low geo-synch orbit. That would do the cadre little good in their present location.

Hunter-Cadre B, First Ten-Cadre, had been sent into a region of northern Arizona to investigate anomalous energy signatures. The heavy, dark cloud cover that permeated a vast stretch of the southwest portion of what used to be the United States was the reason detailed orbital scans were impossible. High-density radioactive particles in the upper atmosphere prevented scans and life from thriving in the area. SkyNet had avoided the area because there was far too much radioactivity to be sure it wouldn't affect the machine consciousness' legions of Machine soldiers. TechCom had also avoided the area after HazMat suited I.D. agents had scouted it a decade ago. The cadre would be fine as long as they got back to their Orca-class shuttle before the air supply in their armor ran out.

That time was rapidly approaching and most of her platoons had reported nothing out of the ordinary. 2nd Squad, Third Platoon, had not reported in and Luna had sent First Lieutenant Ui'Killjoy, she had almost asked him what he had been thinking when they were introduced, and third platoon to investigate. That had been an hour ago and the platoon had not reported in. Luna had ordered her cadre, it was hard to not think of it as a company, back to the shuttle to refill their O2 tanks. When the remaining platoons had checked in she had ordered them to converge on the last reported coordinates of third platoon from random vectors.

The cloud cover was so thick that Luna could forgive the uninformed for believing it was well past sunset. It was in fact a little past noon. For this reason she at first dismissed the black pit she was looking down into as a shadowed blot on the landscape. A peculiarity about the bowl-shaped depression in the terrain worried her though. The bowl's sides seemed too artificial as though it had been excavated.

"Night vision," she said and a line of green swept down across her visor.

This version of night vision was vastly improved over what Luna had used before the alliance. The detail was incredible at ranges of two hundred meters and she could actually _see_ at distances of up to two kilometers. Everything was still rendered in vibrant shades of green but there were ways to put color into it.

"Add IR; light amp."

Two more lines flowed down her visor, adding infrared and light amplification to her HUD. What she saw was almost too hard to believe. Nestled inside the bowl, which seemed to originate from a fissure in its center, was a vibrant artificial construct. Heat plumes and what little light managed to escape whatever camouflage prevented unassisted visual detection was enough to make her eyes water. She could not make out any details of what lay beneath the shield but Luna could discern enough to make her worry.

"Comm., First and Second Platoon leads," the open air sound that wasn't a sound filled her helmet, "Status."

Luna waited for thirty seconds and received nothing but static in reply.

"Repeat, stat-"

The thunderous echo of multiple Boom-Stick detonations filled the terrain and that was all the answer she needed. Fourth platoon, she had attached herself to them as they were the weakest of her platoons, toggled the safeties on their burstcannons and rail-rifles in anticipation. They were scattered by team and each had selected more than adequate cover as they waited for orders.

"Comm., dropship alpha-dash-five-three-one."

This time the silence was deafening.

"Comm., Toombs."

"Captain?" Toombs answered quickly.

"Hot evac. Send them out by team; fallback point Alpha. Give me an escort, your call, and I'll lead them."

Half a minute later, when more than half the platoon had already sidled away, an incoming comm. icon came to life on her HUD. It was from a Shas'ui named Axle. Sometimes Luna had a very hard time not laughing at the monikers many Tau had chosen. She looked behind her and saw two forms in the minimalist Pathfinder armor. Shas'ui Axle carried a burstcannon and his teammate wielded a rail-rifle.

"Open," Luna commanded and the computer opened up the communication channel, "Follow my lead. Cloaks active but remember to use cover like you're still visible. Comprende?"

There was a moment of silence before Shas'ui Axle responded with a simple, "Yes, sir."

"Captain works better. Let's move."

Luna tapped in a simple code on her wrist pad and the air above her arms rippled. In less than a second her arm was visible as only a slight distortion in the air. Her two guards activated their stealth fields on the move and within a few steps all three were only visible as vague distortions. Their armor was also thermal-shielded and, Luna hoped fervently, would prevent an enemy from getting IR-locks on her team. Luna came to the gentle slope the platoon had climbed to reach the bluff and frowned worriedly as she saw the amount of dust that the platoon was kicking up in its wake. There was nothing to be done about it though and she could only hope that the persistent wind that she could not feel would mask the cloud the cadre would be sure to make as they hustled for the shuttle. Luna and her two subordinates settled into an easy, ground-eating lope with the rest of the squad. Her cadre had relentlessly practiced moving together with their stealth fields on and now it was paying off. The captain had total confidence in her soldiers not to get in each other's way and to make excellent time.

"Incoming," a T-850 broke radio silence in a maddeningly calm voice.

"Comm., all! Cover!" Luna spat quickly and promptly dove into a furrow barely worth the name alongside Axle and Ui'Solan.

Luna watched the skies and tried to still her twitching fingers. She hated being helpless as her people were in danger around her, but there was nothing she could do except watch as brilliant globules of plasma arched beautifully down from the sky. Then the first impacted and washed the world in blue-white light and thunder. Luna's HUD polarized to protect her eyesight. Fear, ugly and unwelcome, threatened to consume her for a few seconds then vanished before it could. She felt clear now and utterly disconnected from everything around her. Luna feared there was something seriously wrong with her mental state, ever since SkyNet had killed her husband, but she would fight whomever General Conner told her to fight as long as she was able. Thunder shook heaven and earth in a long line as some kind of bomber flew by at sonic speeds. The bomb-clusters it had dropped must have been plasma on par with Hegemony plasma rockets because five-meter wide areas of ground were being glassed. Luna was tempted to order all the T-850's in the command to make a run for the shuttle. A T-850, recon variant, could reach a top running speed of fifty-five kilometers per hour. The bombers, or fighters, might go after the running Terminators and that would give the rest of the cadre a chance. If whatever assholes were attacking her cadre didn't then the Terminators might make it back and get reinforcements.

"Comm.-"

The word had barely been uttered when a spectacular explosion created a huge fireball several hundred meters above their heads and maybe half a kilometer to the west. An incoming comm. icon appeared in her HUD and she was surprised to see that it was from the shuttle her cadre had taken from orbit.

"Open."

"I apologize, Captain," Kor'vre Froden said, sounding not at all apologetic, "I became a tad impatient."

An Orca-class shuttle broke through the cloud cover over their heads but it was not the one her hunter-cadre had taken from orbit.

"Maximum magnification," Luna said, knowing that the channel had closed after a silence that lasted longer than fifteen seconds.

Her HUD magnified on the image of the shuttle five hundred meters above their heads and she could see the rear-entry ramp opening wide. Massive shapes, four and a half meters tall, propelled themselves from the shuttle as it came under anti-aircraft plasma fire from the direction Luna and the platoon had retreated from. A squadron of ten Tau fighters, they were calling them Reapers, broke through the cloud cover and commenced strafing runs on targets that were outside of Luna's range of vision. The four humanoid-shaped behemoths had launched themselves out of the shuttle from four hundred meters up and were using heavy-duty anti-gravity thrusters to slow their descent. Luna had thought R&D was still ironing out the wrinkles in updating Crisis BattleSuit technology. Apparently she had been wrong. While in mid-air the BattleSuits fired shoulder-mounted missiles at ground targets. The resultant explosions caused ground tremors that Luna could feel almost two kilometers away. One BattleSuit had an obscenely long cannon mounted on its shoulder that fired a blinding plume of particle energy. Luna did not want to be whatever that BattleSuit was firing at. Behind the BattleSuits came three H/K Tanks with auxiliary a-g units attached to their sides for better aerial control.

Suddenly, and to Luna's great relief, the skies were boiling with Orca-class dropships, Covenant Phantoms and dropships, and Tau Reapers. The Reapers had smooth rounded fuselages and aft compartments but the nose was divided into four prongs that made Luna wince just to look at them. The Reapers maneuvered through the growing assault group with such speed, precision and finesse that Luna could almost have thought that Machines were controlling the craft. There had been rumors that the kor pilots had actually allowed Aerial H/K CPU's to be installed into the fresh-off-the-line fighters but she had always discredited that. Now she had to wonder if there had been some element of truth to those rumors.

The incoming comm. icon appeared again, this time accompanied by a shrill beep, and an officer's insignia.

"Normal magnification. Open," Luna said, prompting her HUD to return to its normal magnification setting and a tiny image of Kor'el Faauj, commander of the _Vegas_, replaced the comm. icon.

"I have sent word to Trinity Command, Captain. The _Rejoice In Freedom_ and _Death To Tyranny _have joined us along with their complements of Marines and Armored Cavalry."

Both ships carried several Ten-Cadres of Marines, at least seven thousand soldiers between them, but Luna didn't think that would be enough.

"Apologies, kor'el, but I don't think that will be enough. The enemy installation is huge."

The Tau's almost non-existent lips parted in a slight smile, "I already thought of that."

For a second Luna thought God had been punched square in the balls and was roaring his outrage throughout the skies. The captain looked up and was rooted in shock as the clouds parted before the deceptively slender needle that was a Pathfinder gunship. The _Vegas_ was two hundred and seventy-five meters from bow to stern; fifty from port to starboard; and was composed of three decks. For all of that bulk the vessel looked like nothing more than a huge needle complete with an eye twenty meters from stern. The gunship was supposed to provide orbital support for Pathfinder cadres that suddenly found themselves surrounded by vastly superior enemy forces or if an enemy installation needed immediate liquidation. For that purpose its primary armaments were three capital-class rail-cannon emplacements redesigned for planetary bombardment. Luna had watched the gunship obliterate asteroids with a single volley of the rail-weapons. There was no way for accurate firing solutions with the irradiated cloud cover and so Kor'el Fauuj, in a gutsy move in Luna's opinion, had brought the ship through the cloud cover.

"I've still got platoons unaccounted for, sir," Luna said, doing her best to keep her voice as level as possible.

The rail-weapons were relatively precise but that was a misrepresentation of the effect they could have. A four-meter round in excess of two tons traveling at hypersonic speeds left a very big hole upon impact. The rail-cannons could fire at a rate of a round every three seconds, still an eternity in frenetic space battles so Luna had been informed, and would probably reduce the mysterious fortress to debris in short order.

"We're pulling them out now. We've broken through the comm. blackout. I commend you on your training Captain. Third platoon had some casualties, most in second squad, but they managed to pull back to a secure location in the immediate area. I've sent a detachment of Marines to evac them and we should-"

The thunderous report of a massive rail-cannon emplacement drowned all other noise from area. A virtual cloud of ionized air led to the gunship. The gunship's entropy-shields had taken most of the rounds kinetic force away before it impacted but the round had managed to penetrate the outer hull shield-layer. The energy shield sandwiched between the shield-layer and hull armor had disintegrated the round thankfully. El'Fauuj's image disappeared just as several more rail-cannon blasts impacted on the _Vegas_' anterior hull. A large section of alloy was visible flung from the gunship. The _Vegas_ quickly rose back into the sky, only to be hit by another trio of blasts, and only just made it into the cloud cover before it could be destroyed. Out of the cloud cover came first one, then another, and then a third rail-cannon round. There were three bright flashes of light from over the horizon but no massive explosions.

A comm. from Killjoy drew her attention away from the spectacle.

"Open."

"Captain, we've lost six men. Eight more are critical and ten others have moderate injuries. What are we doing?"

Luna wanted to spit fury but instead buttoned her erroneous instinct down and concentrated on her cadre.

"Hunker down. Keep them alive until our ride gets here."

* * *

"I could get used ta this, captain!" First Lieutenant Laslo exclaimed from her gunnery position.

"Right there with you, Lassie," Major Lucas, newly promoted to head the first company of the Armored Cavalry Division; Trinity Marine Corps, quickly turned to flash a grin at his gunner.

Major Lucas was piloting the heaviest armored vehicle that the division had and he had at first been weary because many of the design features were of Tau origin. The goat-footed bastards had given him a new set of teeth with their technology and for that he could forgive just about anything. The Devastator Anti-Gravity Heavy Armored Vehicle was thirty tons of pure destructive force in a rounded trapezoidal package. Its main ordinance was a top-mounted rail-cannon that could be used to target large aerospace vehicles, enemy armor, or heavily fortified installations. Four batteries of heavy-duty, high-yield plasma rockets lay close to the hull of at each rounded corner. Dual-particle repeaters graced the front and rear side panels. The Devastator had a storage capacity of two hundred and twenty-nine rockets and nearly a thousand rounds for the cannon.

Lucas sat in the center of the piloting array in a combat seat with a reclined back. His feet were inserted into the straps of thrust pedals that controlled the anti-gravity banks beneath the tank. At the end of the seat's arms were contoured control yokes with thumb and forefinger triggers. On either side of him, easily within arms reach in the relatively cramped interior, were two crescent-shaped control boards. There was even a single control board upon which touch-crystals glowed like a miniature night sky. Directly in front of him was a gently curving flatscreen that was currently inactive. Lucas wore a helmet that gave him a first-person view as though he was perched at the end of the turret. His gunner and comm.'s officers sat in the midst of their own stations behind him. The hundreds of softly glowing touch-crystals cast a soft glow in the interior of the Devastator.

"Release the scout-drones."

"Drones away, sir," Second Lieutenant Gianni said, her voice still soft and gentle after years of fighting through hellish battlefields.

Outside the ship four Tau scout-drones, fitted with an array of updated sensor arrays, lifted from their alcoves on the exterior of the hull. Lucas, as well as Gianni, watched four tiny windows at the corner of their HUD's as the machines raced off into the battlefield. Inside the tank it was deceptively peaceful but outside was a different matter. The Devastator sat at the edge of a bluff, the same bluff that Captain Luna and her Pathfinders had used earlier, surveying a dazzling display of light and sound. AA plasma guns seared the night sky accompanied by the intermittent flashes of rockets seeking to smash attackers into oblivion. Reapers, as well as oblong bombers with stubby wings that had yet to be given a common-use nickname, rained their own brands of hell down upon the black mass from which their unknown enemy struck. Unfortunately this enemy had access to SkyNet's entropy-shield technology and most of their orbit-to-surface weapons were absolutely useless against that and the traditional shielding that was the black cap. They had tried conventional ballistic missiles fitted with fusion warheads but interceptor missiles from the enemy base took them out before they got within a hundred kilometers. So, as it always seemed to come to, it was up to the groundhogs to take care of things up close and personal. The entropy-shield was at least two hundred meters wide but was projected two kilometers from the traditional shield. That left a pretty wide corridor for someone to walk up and knock.

That was where Lucas' cavalry came.

Stretched out along a front a kilometer long was his command, four troops of five vehicles each, and they were ready to prove their worth. Each troop was composed of a Devastator, two medium armored vehicles called Dillo's, and light armored vehicles that were the new Tau Hammerheads. The Dillo's had large rounded bodies that humped impressively high. They were missile and rocket platforms that could produce an awe-inspiring amount of destruction in a short amount of time. The Hammerheads retained the original design shape but were significantly lighter and faster while retaining almost all of their former destructive potential. The Hammerheads main cannon was particle in nature and four top-mounted, linked heavy-plasma repeaters provided anti-personnel as well as anti-aerial protection. A cluster-bomb launcher rounded out the Hammerheads arsenal. Behind the primary assault wave was a collection of Covenant Wraiths, Spectres, and H/K Tanks. The third assault wave was a plethora of Devilfish APC's, Orca-class shuttles, Covenant dropships and even Covenant Shadows. Aerial H/K's would provide the escort for the infantry wave that Lucas hoped to lead right up to the enemy's doorstep.

"Scout-drones report possible minefield," Gianni reported.

"Cluster bombs," Lucas ordered, his voice tense and quiet as it always was before a big fight.

"This is Company Lead. Cluster saturation fire at following coordinates. Send back, over."

Once the gunners of each Hammerhead had radioed back the proper coordinates Gianni gave them a go to fire. An aperture opened at the rear of each Hammerhead and a small launch tube extended. A trio of rocket-propelled cluster bombs arched gracefully into the air towards the entropy shield. It was obvious to anyone watching when the bombs entered the shield. All of them slowed down noticeably and some of them began to veer off course. Then they were through and their warheads burst into a hundred plasma bomblets with an impact area of twenty meters. The ground suddenly blossomed into a field of brilliant purple-white light before the mines went off and added their own plasma energy to a mix that turned the barren field into a nightmare of terrible energy.

"Patch me in. Company-wide, Gianni."

"Done, sir."

"This is Major Lucas. Let's go show these bastards who's got the biggest set. Advance! "

Lucas pushed both control yokes forward to the maximum and his Devastator launched itself into the air. The Major pushed the foot pedals down as far as they would go, increasing his a-g banks output, and the Devastator barely even jolted as it finally reached the ground again. It dipped alarmingly at first and would have shot up into the air its maximum height of five meters if Lucas hadn't eased off the thrust pedals. All around him his troop duplicated the maneuver and soon they were fanning out in the company's standard assault pattern. The Devastator was in the center of the formation with the Hammerheads ten meters out front and the Dillos ten behind. Fifteen meters separated each pair of vehicles. The Hammerheads were capable of a maximum speed of approximately three hundred kilometers per hour, the Dillos two hundred and sixty, and the Devastator a mere two hundred, twenty-five. Soon the entire company was racing across the barren plain with Major Lucas's troop in the lead.

When they hit the entropy field it was like hitting a river of glue. The jolt as they lost nearly half their speed upon contact with the field would have pulped them if they had been in Covenant Wraiths but these new vehicles had all been designed with partial inertial dampeners. It was still jarring but Lucas had told his troop captains to expect it. The armored vehicles could still move but only at a fraction of their normal speed and they still had nearly a hundred meters to go. Moving at nearly seventy-five kph they would cross that distance in seconds but seconds was all it took on the modern battlefield.

"Sensor contacts!" Gianni shouted, "Covenant Scarabs."

Lucas magnified on the image before him and felt cold sweat break out beneath his helmet. Emerging from the ground like the insects they were named for, the six Covenant Scarabs all oriented towards his relatively slow-moving company. Lucas and his heavy assault company had taken one down nearly a year ago with far too many casualties. That was partially the reason he had agreed to learn to operate the monster he was riding now. The multi-storied, six-legged monstrosity that was the Covenant Scarab was nearly invincible to conventional infantry. Even SkyNet's H/K, both aerial and ground, had found it difficult to take the juggernauts down. Only inserting a Special Forces strike team into the interior of one or massive aerial bombardment had been a sure way to take down a Scarab.

"All Hammerheads engage!" Lucas shouted, silently cursing SkyNet for inventing the entropy shield while Gianni relayed his orders, "Lassie, get a firing solution on that lead Scarab, the biggest one, as soon as we clear the field. Full load right in her face."

"Yes, sir!" Lassie snapped and then muttered, "You always did know what a girl likes."

The eight Hammerheads of the company shot forward as they increased their thrust output to full. They were still only reaching a little less than fifty percent of their normal speed. Just as the lead element was clearing the entropy field the Scarabs opened up with their main energy cannons. It was particle energy, which was obvious from the way it crackled and spit, and that was a very bad thing for anything in the beams line of fire. Thankfully the pilots of the Scarabs fired the weapons in fairly predictable arcs from nearly a kilometer away and had never gone up against redesigned Tau Hammerheads. The Hammerheads shot forward from the entropy-shield as their ion-thrust engines output soared to one hundred percent. That would have put many of them in the Scarabs line of fire but each Hammerhead spun around in a complete one hundred, eighty-degree spin and effectively halted their forward momentum. The Scarabs could not alter their firing trajectories at that point and would need a few more precious seconds to charge their main guns. At the instant the particle beams dispersed the Hammerheads executed another spin and raced towards the Scarabs. The enemy armor had another surprise though in the form of anti-personnel plasma repeaters that began glassing the desolate landscape around the charging Hammerheads. The Hammerheads juked left and right more like fighter planes than armored vehicles while maintaining close to full speed as they answered in kind with almost simultaneous blasts of their particle cannons.

The beams crackled toward a single Scarab, the diameter of the beam-points was at least half a meter wide, and Lucas waited with glee for them to make contact.

"Sonofabitch!" he spluttered in disbelief as the particle beams met an entropy shield.

"Minimal damage, sir!" Gianni exclaimed, her voice tense.

"Get 'em in close. Inside the biggie's arc. Once we're clear of the shield I want a full-scale missile barrage. One salvo. Devastators, up close, give them a belly full of hate! You hear that, Lassie! Hold the load!"

"I hate it when that happens," his gunner muttered and he pretended not to hear.

The Hammerheads closed the distance to the Scarabs quickly and began a dazzling array of evasive maneuvers to get inside the range of the Scarab's main cannon arcs. Unfortunately that put them in the range of the plasma repeaters and the range was so small it became increasingly difficult to evade the heavy weapons. A millisecond before Lucas' Devastator cleared the field a pair of Hammerheads was slagged by the convergent blasts of a Scarab's underbelly plasma repeaters. The Hammerheads had shields but the power requirements for a particle cannon meant the shields were not powerful enough to stand up to the combined efforts of several heavy-plasma repeaters.

Then the Devastator cleared the field.

Again the main cannons of the Scarabs drew a line in the sand. Lucas saw the beam arcing in on an intercept course and thumbed the bottom thumb-trigger on the top of his right control yoke. A supercharged burst of ion-thrust accelerated the Devastator forward enough that only a small portion of the Scarab particle beam caught the rear of the vehicle. The relatively small entropy-field, only two meters in width, around the Devastator provided adequate protection from the brief exposure to particle energy. Lucas grit his teeth as the control yokes wobbled in his hand slightly. The line of Devastators, in almost the exact position they had been in before entering the entropy-shield, were halfway to the Scarab's when the first of the Dillo's escaped the slow torture that was an entropy-shield. A small barrage of fusion, particle rockets and 'Hellfire' plasma shells was fired at the Scarabs from that one Dillo but were quickly followed by dozens more from the remaining Dillo's. Docking ports, relatively small against the massive bulk of the enemy armor, along the sides of each Scarab opened. Shapes darted from the ports and began to orbit the Scarabs like point-defense satellites.

"They've been tentatively identified as Tau gun-drones," Gianni called, voice slightly distracted as she listened to communications coming from the Troop captains.

"Didn't know they came that big," Lucas murmured as he glanced at the scale reading below his target acquisition reticle."

The gun-drones, apoproximately thirty of them, formed a scrimmage line, and let loose with a blinding display of plasma light and the all encompassing electronic sizzle that plasma weapons made. Flower-like detonations littered the sky as the missile barrage was torn from the air. A single 'Hellfire' plasma shell made it through the barrage but an enemy gun-drone darted in front of it. The plasma shell detonated and unleashed an incredibly large sphere of searing plasma energy. Unfortunately it had been intercepted outside of the entropy-shield and the effect on the Scarab was negligible. Several of the enemy gun-drones had been taken out as well and that was a plus in Lucas' book.

"Release the gun-drones. Company-wide."

Four ports opened up on the outside of the Devastator and oblong spheres burst forth on jets of anti-gravity. In the air their sides opened up to reveal a baleful eye and lethal looking weapon ports in their centers. From the Major's Devastator rose twelve of the upgraded Tau gun-drones though they were only a quarter the size of the Scarabs. The remaining Hammerheads released their own trio of gun-drones but the Dillo's unloaded a full-fledged swarm of them. Streaks of light were all that Lucas could make out as the Tau gun-drones soared to meet their enemies. It was truly a matter of watching wolf-packs attacking a bear but these wolves had high-powered plasma weapons at their disposal. Once the Devastator was a mere three hundred meters from the Scarab he decided it was close enough.

"Fire at will!" Major Lucas shouted the glee clear in his voice.

"Firing!" Laslo answered in kind and the operating lights flickered slightly around them.

Lucas watched the quickly approaching firefight and the rapidly dispersing spears of ionized air. The Tau gun-drones engaging the enemy drones darted out of the path of the rail-cannon blast. The Scarab's drones were not so fast and many of them were obliterated by the kinetic energy of the shell's backwash. There was no noticeable slowdown, the rail-round was moving far too fast for even the HUD to view in real-time, when the round entered the entropy-shield. It was obvious however that the shield had an effect because the conventional energy shield that was projected close to the Scarab's armor flared to life but was not visibly penetrated. A blast that should have rightfully taken the Scarab's nose off barely singed its nostril hair.

"Damnit!" Lassie swore as she acquired a firing solution for another around.

"Hold your fire until we're inside the shield. Gianni, Hammerheads take out the belly guns. Devastators target the leg joints. Dillo's are to hold fire."

Lucas truly appreciated the helmet that absorbed the buckets of sweat that was leaking from his brow as he piloted his huge vehicle through a nightmare of particle and plasma death. His Devastator only partially connected with the edge of the overlapping entropy-shields the Scarab was obviously using, though that assessment came a little too late for the Major, and the sudden loss of momentum caused a sickening crunch that echoed in the cramp confines of the cockpit. Everything spun wildly for a brief moment before the automated systems worked to counter the spin. The tank was stopped before that could happen by the spike-like foot of the Scarab.

Lucas jerked both control yokes to the left and the Devastator obediently darted to the left. Lucas was engaging this particular Scarab alone, as were the other four Devastators, while the remaining Hammerheads kept the remaining one busy.

"Firing!" Lassie shrilled and whatever Lucas had been expecting it was not what he got.

The main cannon sheared off the bottom most two-thirds of the leg farthest from them. Five high-density plasma rockets slagged the knee-joint opposite the first. Warning lights on his HUD told him that all four dual-particle repeaters were firing.

"Maybe we should get clear, sir!" Lassie shouted, but Lucas was already ahead of her.

The Devastator cleared the rear legs of the Scarab as its purple-black posterior crashed ponderously to the ground.

"Find a soft spot," Lucas ordered his gunner.

"Yes, sir," Lassie replied in a 'well, duh' tone of voice that the Major ignored as he punched up vid-feeds from the remaining gun-drones.

The smaller drones had won their aerial battle but more than half of them had not survived it.

"Status."

There were a few moment of silence before Gianni answered.

"All Scarabs have been immobilized."

"Tell them to watch out for dorsal guns. These big bastards had them in the tech-schematics." Lucas opened up his own comm.-line to his second-in-command for the operation.

"This is El'Fanshui," a tiny holo-panel extended from above with the image of a grizzled Fire Warrior with a faded scar across his nasal cavity.

"Move the second wave up. Quick five-klick perimeter, half-klick spread. Keep them away from the Scarab's. Send up a hunter-cadre." Lucas fixed his eyes on the image of the Scarab, "We've got a bug to gut."

* * *

The inside of the Devilfish was silent except for the gentle hum of the idling propulsion systems. On the inside of Private Cage's helmet it was another story. He could hear his heart pounding frightfully hard. The mesh underlay he wore against his skin absorbed the cold sweat that he shouldn't have been feeling. Cage was a product of TechCom training and a childhood in post-Judgment Day America. Cage, like so many others of his generation, was emotionally disconnected from the prospects of pain and death. Thinking of either had long ago ceased to rattle him; in fact he had trouble recalling if it ever had.

_Why do I feel like I'm about to throw up?_ He thought disgustedly.

Cage looked to his left and the obsidian faceplate of a fellow Marine. His comrade nodded but Cage was already turning to his right. There he met an identical visage and his heart seemed to skip a beat.

"It was never this bad in training," he spoke softly to himself, a bad habit his TechCom and Marine instructors had been unable to rid him of.

Facilities at the fledgling BattleDome were still under construction and the Pathfinders and Special Forces squads got most of the time in them. Cage had only received Corps. training with his new squad for three weeks. The Terminators had not joined them until a week before their first deployment. Tau and human fire-teams had volunteered to fill their roles during down-time. Cage had been anxious when the trio of T-850's had shown up at the former TechCom training facility but it had been manageable.

Now all he could think about were the stories the vet's always had about Terminators sneaking into bases, insinuating themselves into squads, and wiping everyone out. What if that was their plan? Cage had heard all the rumors about SkyNet. It was not entirely out of the question. What if the aliens were in on it?

As the Private's world slowly began to revolve around the words, 'What if…', his hands slowly tightened on the grip of his KE-10 in its thigh holster.

"Hello, Private Cage," the voice in his ear made the Marine jerk his hand away from his sidearm guiltily.

A tiny window in the lower left corner of his HUD winked open into the blue-grey face of his squad leader.

"Shas'ui?" Cage said uncertainly, as he still had trouble remembering the Tau's caste system.

"Are you nervous, trooper?" the alien asked, though it was hard to tell if he actually cared.

"No, sir."

The sergeant bared his teeth in a vaguely threatening manner, "I may be new to human honorifics, Cage, but I do not believe that is the proper term for a female."

"Sorry, ma'am," Cage mumbled, glad they were on a private line and that the Tau could not see the flush of his olive-toned cheeks.

"You are lying," Sergeant Ui'Dye stated matter-of-factly.

"Ma'am?"

"You are nervous. Are you going to tell me why or do I tell the… L.T. that you are unfit for duty?"

It took Cage a minute to decide and he was slightly amazed the Sergeant wasn't chewing him out for it.

"It's the fakies, ma'am," he finally worked up the spit to speak.

"Ah, the Terminators," she was quiet for a moment before continuing, "Let me guess. You are wondering if, or when, they are going to betray you. Betray humanity in general."

"How-?"

"It is something I was told is very common among Terran Marines. It is hard coming to terms with such a devastating change in your life. Most of the Tau in the Corps. have killed at least one human, if not here than in other Galaxies. Before that we trained with the almost certainty that a sustained conflict with the Imperium of Man was inevitable."

"How can you stomach it then?" Cage asked before he knew what he was going to say.

"We are Fire Warriors. Raised for war, bred to fight, it is our primary function in Tau society. We fight against, and ally with, whoever are Aun's tell us. Some alliances have been… unbalanced, but we serve the Greater Good of our people always."

"What should I do?"

"As I believe soldiers in every army have done since the first group of creatures banded together under a single leader. Believe in your leaders. Believe that they are doing the best thing for your people. If you feel as though you will not be able to function in the squad then say so. There is no shame in it."

Cage took a deep breath and found that his anxiety had subsided somewhat. He looked to his two fellow humans, part of the squad's gun-team, and knew that he couldn't leave them. Most line infantry squads only had a three-Terran gun-team of humans to make up their human component. The three of them were the only ones they knew wouldn't turn on them.

"No, ma'am. I'll be okay."

"Would you like to share in my mediatations?"

"You meditate?"

"It helps to calm me before the missions that make me uneasy."

"Like going into a combat zone with an untested squad. Half of whom you were at war with months ago."

"Exactly," she gave him that unnerving facial expression again.

Then Cage grinned sheepishly as he realized it was a smile.

"Do I have to kneel?"

"No, just listen to my voice," and the Sergeant began to chant in her native tongue.

The universal translator built into his helmet began to repeat what she said but a few commands into Cage's wrist-comp. quieted the program. It was oddly soothing listening to the guttural, melodic sounds the Sergeant was producing. Slowly his tension and anxiety were overwhelmed by the alien chanting. When it suddenly stopped Cage realized more time had passed than he realized when he heard himself softly repeating the Sarge's words.

"Final weapons check, troopers," Sergeant Ui'Dye switched to a squad-wide channel, "The cadre is moving out in two minutes. The cavalry left us half a dozen Scarabs to clean out. Two squads to a Scarab. Assignments when we're on-site."

Cage stood and did a quick check on his weapons. His sidearm was perfect, being a close-tie for best shot in the squad with it meant he took especial care with the weapon, and he didn't even bother. His V4 Plasma Rifle had a full charge and the safeties were in place. Cage lifted the plasma repeater he was responsible for. It had been an unfamiliar weapon to him, based largely off of Tau burstcannon design, but with the added bonus of a pivoting-joint tripod attachment near the end of the barrel. The weapons were good soft-point emplacement weapons as well as being light enough for mobile heavy suppressive fire. Something Cage would never understand about the bad-ass new weapons he had access to, was why they were all pristine, non-reflective silver in color. Even odder a Marine could change the color of any weapon to an obsidian shade with the flick of a switch. The plasma repeater checked out in the green and he set it back into its safety lock.

Cage's incoming-comm. signal beeped and an image of his team leader, Corporal Adams, winked open on his HUD. The corporal himself came to stand over Cage as he was lowering his restraint bars.

"You ready, Cage. This you first tour, right?"

"Yes," he nodded, hoping he didn't sound as defensive as he sounded.

"Don't worry. We'll walk you through it. Right, Stiller?"

"Walk in the park," Stiller cut in over the gun-team's channel.

Adams clapped Cage on the shoulderplate, "You're secure."

Adams took his seat and Sergeant Ui'Dye made sure his restraint was secure. Then the Second Lieutenant, Ui'Tyl'dus, checked the sergeant. Once the First Lieutenant checked his officers and the Master Sergeant checked his sergeants the First Lieutenant opened up the platoon-wide net.

"We move out in ten seconds. Remember that together we are far stronger than apart. We fight for the Greater Good."

"For the Greater Good!" a chorus of Tau voices thundered through Cage's helmet.

The lights in the troop compartment went dark and the red in-transit warning lights glowed to life. There was very little sensation of motion. The only evidence that the APC was moving was the slightly increased hum of the engines. Fifty-six seconds later, he knew because he had checked on his mission clock, the APC lurched. It took a hard hit for the inertial dampeners to overload. For a moment Cage thought they had been hit by enemy munitions.

A loud chime preceded the voice of the Devilfish's pilot addressing the hold.

"Apologies, troopers," the air caste pilot actually sounded sincere, "I should have warned that we would be crossing an entropy shield. We will be exiting shortly so expect another sudden jolt. I will try to minimize it. Ui'Lei, out."

The second jolt was almost undetectable but that was the signal for First Lieutenant Ui'Joyless to open the platoon net again.

"First and Second squads disembark first. I'll take Third. Ui'Tyl'dus has the command with Master Sergeant Numan as second. Intel. says the enemy might try to trigger a containment failure in the Scarab's energy core. We are not going to let that happen. Be quick but safe. For the Greater Good!"

The phrase was repeated and this time Cage gave a 'hoo-rah!'

The light in the cabin switched to a vibrant green. Cage unlocked his restraint and freed himself in a flash. He quickly retrieved his rifle from its slot beside the seat and secured it across his back. It took less than ten seconds for him to secure his plasma repeater from its slot on the opposite side and get into disembarking position with his gun-team. The fakies in the squad were up front. They would disembark first because they were more likely to survive hostile fire. Then the gun-team would follow to lay down suppressive fire if needed. The two fire-teams would follow last. Cage tightened his grip on his plasma repeater when the door began to lower.

"Demo-team disembarking," the monotonous tone of the demo-team's Machine leader came over the platoon-net and the three imposing figures were marching down the boarding ramp before it touched the ground.

The sun had set long ago and the night was utterly black thanks to the cloud cover. Fortunately the cavalry was still there with their powerful search lights that lit up the area for nearly a kilometer. With the Devilfish adding its own light the area was bright enough for sunbathing. Of course Cage had never seen anyone sunbathe but old-timers loved telling stories about America-past.

"Gun-team, movin' out," Corporal Adams led the way with Cage on his left and Stiller on his right a step behind.

Cage's mouth was as dry as the grit crunching beneath his boots as he took his first step as a Marine going into enemy territory. The T-850's were arrayed in a three-point perimeter around the Devilfish's exfiltration ramp. Cage looked to his right and tried to swallow as he thought that there was little point in the squad erecting a perimeter. Hovering not ten meters away was the colossal bulk of a Devastator tank. He had only seen one once in a class on Marine Corps. armor. The tank was suspended a meter off the ground but the tank itself was probably close to three meters in height. One of its edges looked partially melted but that only added to the machine's innate menace.

"Cage!" Adams voice snapped in his ear, "You gonna set up?"

"Sorry. I'm on it."

Cage took his place beside the Terminator on the right. The Marine went to one knee, his elbow resting on his armored thigh, and held his plasma repeater at the ready. The Terminator switched his massive plasma cannon for the slightly more stream-lined particle cannon. In short order the entire squad had formed a defensive perimeter around the Devilfish. Second squad only took thirty seconds to disembark and the Devilfish sped away into the night.

"Second squad take point," Lieutenant Ui'Tyl'dus ordered over First and Second's squad-wide channels. "First, watch the rear and keep alert for surprises."

Before the Lieutenant had finished speaking second squad had formed up towards the smoking bulk of the Scarab. First squad formed up just as quickly without a word from the Sergeant. The Tau fire-teams flanked the gun-team with the demo-team bringing up the rear. Cage's heart only seemed to beat harder the closer they came to the Scarab. Even with its legs sprawled out the hump of the Scarab's back was a least three stories high.

"They opened up an entry point on the port side," the lieutenant began giving out duties, "Master Sergeant Numan and Second have that insertion route. We'll insert through a service corridor midway up the rear starboard leg."

The squads moved at a quick trot and Cage felt as though he was getting a grip on his encroaching anxiety. Then ports opened along the starboard side and an iridescent cloud of gas began to grow over the Scarab as huge plumes of it burst forth from the vents.

"Emergency venting. There's still time. Move!" the Sarge barked and the squad broke into a steady run all the way to their waypoint marker.

"Six-Five-Three, Ten-Thirty, you're up. Search-and-destroy. One live hostile is the secondary. Disregard if it risks the mission. Understood?"

"Affirmative," the senior fakie acknowledged and the two imposing figures in Marine armor entered the service corridor.

"Gun-team."

Corporal Adams contacted them over the gun-teams secure channel, "I'm up front, Cage has the rear."

That was fine with Cage because his heart had almost come out of his chest when the Scarab had vented. An incoming comm. distracted him as the team entered the dark interior of the Scarab. His visor immediately switched to light amplification without a cue so he could divide his attention.

The increasingly familiar face of his Sarge winked onto his HUD.

"Feeling tense, Cage?" she asked, her brow furrowed slightly.

"A little, Sarge," he admitted, ducking beneath a pipe that was head level to the above average height of the gun-team.

"Take a deep breath, Cage." The Marine did as he was told. "Do you remember the mantra?"

Cage was surprised to find that he did, "Yes."

"Then repeat it in your head. You'll be fine, Cage. Follow your team leader's… lead?"

Cage cracked a tiny smile, "Yes, Sarge, I'll do that."

Sergeant Ui'Dye nodded and cut the comm.-line.

"Contact," a fakie's voice stated quite calmly over the squad's channel. "Half a dozen hostiles classified as Machine-Humans. Possibly upgraded with stolen Covenant technology. Requesting assistance."

"Gun-team, double-time! We'll be on you in less than thirty!" the Lieutenant barked and the gun-team leaped into action.

Cage managed to stay with his team as they sprinted for the end of the corridor.

"Down!" Adams barked and all three dove to the floor.

A searing ball of plasma impacted the ceiling somewhere near Cage's position.

"Hump it!" Adams barked and began worming his way over the floor.

Now the two more experienced team members opened up the distance as Cage struggled with the bulk of his plasma repeater. A glance at the end of the service corridor nearly blinded Cage thanks to his light-amplified visor mode.

"Night vision," he commanded and a line of green washed away the bright lights.

Adams set up from a prone position only a meter from the entryway while Stiller watched his flanks with an AR-50 with a K.E. module. Stiller was responsible for carrying the gun-teams extra power packs since they tended to run through them in a hurry.

"This is Unit Ten-Thirty, requesting immediate assistance."

"Cage!" Adams barked as he opened up with his plasma repeater.

The area the corridor had led to looked like the maintenance room. Four pylons covered in shelves of tools and spare parts adorned the ovular room. Large work tables and benches also populated the room. Plasma fire poured into the room from each of the three other service corridors as well as from a ladder well in the center of the room. The two Terminators were pinned down behind an overturned work table that was already halfway slagged. One Terminator was lying supine, absolutely motionless, while its team leader returned fire with its massive plasma cannon. The level of detail Cage had with the new night vision gar never ceased to amaze him.

"Get on the left tunnel," Adams told him as calm as a fakie, "We'll cover the rest."

Cage's legs carried him towards the pylon only two meters from the Terminators before he could think about what he was doing. Turning his back to them was hard but he managed. There was a work table close so he kicked it over to give his back partial cover. Cage went to one knee behind the pylon, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and leaned around the pylon. He never got a good look at the hostiles. Cage simply pressed the firing stud and hosed the interior of the tunnel with searing plasma fire. Shields flashed but a sudden influx of return fire made him duck back behind cover. A plasma grenade sailed out of nowhere and landed where his head had been seconds before. Somehow the Marine scrambled out of the way so that the concussion merely tossed him across the room. Unfortunately his plasma repeater did not accompany him. Cage landed with a jarring impact onto a workbench. He rolled behind it just as a burst of plasma slagged its surface. Cage numbly unshipped his plasma rifle, undid the safety, and switched the firing mode to electrical plasma. The bench was solid and provided cover as he set his rifle on it. He had been catapulted over the Terminators and had a clear line of sight into the service tunnel. His heart hammered in his chest as Adams lit up the service corridor to on his left.

Hostiles began to emerge from the corridor he was covering. Cage lined his targeting reticule up with the rifle's scope and his HUD changed to the rifle's perspective. Cage magnified on the lead hostile and instinctively recoiled from what he saw. The hostile's left eye and cheek were the only part of his face not covered by metal. Cage reconnected with his rifle and could not believe what he was seeing. None of the cyborgs, it was the only word he could come up with, wore clothing. The vast majority of their bodies were covered in dull, black armor. They wielded what looked like plasma rifles but were easily twice the size of Cage's.

Cage's plasma rifle was capable of fully automatic fire and the Private emptied his entire battery pack into the trio of emerging figures. Their shields sparked and died but each remained on their feet to return fire. Cage ducked behind the bench as he slapped in a fresh pack. This time he leaned out from the right side of the bench and raked fire across their knees. This time the shields flared out quickly and visible, even through the night vision, arcs of electricity made each dance a merry jig before collapsing.

Then the room was practically filled with plasma bolts for the briefest instant. When it was over the fire-teams systematically checked the service corridors while the two fakie's administered to their fallen comrade.

"You did well, trooper," the Sarge complimented him as he stood from cover, "If only I had done as well in my first action." There was a pregnant pause, " Of course I managed to hold on to my weapon."

The Sarge held Cage's repeater out to him and he took it gratefully.

"Won't happen again, Sarge."

The Sergeant nodded and moved away.

"Sarge's really taken a shine to you, Cage. Why the hell are you so lucky?" Adams poked over the team's channel.

"I'm pretty?"

The Lieutenant cut off any other remarks by addressing the entire squad, "Alpha team and Cage, secure this position. Unit Six-Five-Three should reboot in a minute."

Cage got an extra battery pack for his plasma repeater from Stiller while he and Alpha set up a hard-point around the immobilized Terminator. The squad melted a hole through the locked down hatch in the stairwell with a fusion charge. The two-man gun-team dropped down first after rolling an EMP grenade down. Bravo team followed next and then came the remaining fakies.

The next few minutes proved a tortuous exercise in hurry –up-and-wait. Cage intermittently received battlefield updates when someone broadcast over the squad or his gun-teams channel. The fakie rebooted, sat up, and then took position without a word. When the hatch to the control deck opened everyone was a second from firing when Second squad's FOF-icon popped onto their HUD's. Half of Second was on the third deck when Lieutenant Ui'Tyl'dus activated the platoon net.

"Scarab reactor secure. Scarab control room secured. We got our live hostile. Good job, troopers!"

Everyone in the room began slapping shoulder in relief. Neither squad had lost a single man. Cage's thoughts turned to the mysterious installation waiting for them and couldn't help but wonder how long their luck would last.

* * *

"Four days, people," General Conner stated, sitting at ISMC Command deep in the Canadian Rockies, "It's been four days and we haven't heard a thing."

The conference room was occupied by Shas'O Kais, Genera Perry, SkyNet's holographic representation, and a Fio'el named Malice.

"We are very close to breeching their shield wall," Malice said a touch defensively.

"That's not what worried me, El'Malice. Once their Scarabs were beaten and their fighters shot down they buttoned up. No response to bombing runs and they only their rail cannons if they are directly threatened. I would think they had given up if I didn't know how fanatical Alex and Gabriel Stone are."

"I believe there is the answer you seek," SkyNet interjected, "These Machine-Humans seem much like the Luddites in their thinking. They wish to wipe both humans, Tau, and Machines from the face of the planet. What would be the most effective way to do so?"

"Bio-warfare," Conner replied tonelessly.

"Nanotech warfare to be precise. It would be the only way to ensure widespread contagion rapidly. It would prove difficult to adapt a nanotech virus capable of terminating the species represented in The Trinity without killing the Machine-Humans."

"I suggest a surgical strike team," O'Kais spoke up quietly, "Neutralize the shield generators and we vaporize the site from orbit as well as from inside the installation. I suggest this could be the Triad's first mission."

"They aren't ready," General Perry said, "I could have a squad of Special Forces ready in less than five hours. I'll lead them myself."

The three military commanders of ISMC voted and General Perry's suggestion won two-to-one.

"Hold on, Perry," Conner caught up with his brother-in-arms on the landing pad where a modified Tau Reaper waited. "I voted for you because I know you want a chance at the Stones, but don't let it jeopardize the mission."

Perry started at his General for a long moment before nodding and climbing into his fighter. Conner wondered if the vengeful General would heed his advice. Alexander Stone had nearly killed Luna during the infiltration of NORAD and Perry had never forgotten it. Conner couldn't help cracking a smile as the Reaper rose unsteadily into the air.

_At least his landings have gotten better_, Conner mused as the fighter took off into the night.


	12. Alexander Stone

The troop-hold of a Covenant Phantom was an entirely different environment when occupied by an ISMC Special Forces squad. The squad was organized into four, four-Marine Teams composed of a pair of Tau, a human, and a T-X model Terminator. General Perry had been adamant that his forces integrate at the most basic level because of the wildly varying circumstances one of his squad's could find itself in. None of the humans had liked it but they had been bent, sometimes painfully, under Perry's iron will.

_At least they get along with the Tau well enough_, Perry thought from his seat beside the squad leader.

"May I speak freely, sir?" Captain McClane asked loudly because everyone had their helmets off and the enclosed space practically vibrated with the multitude of voices. Perry nodded and the Captain took a minute to realize that was the only response he was getting. "Why'd you pick this squad? I can think of several others who've had higher scores in the 'Dome."

Perry nodded in agreement, "Yes, but your squad has jelled the best. This kind of operation needs a squad that's like family. You've come the closest to that so far."

A soulful melody filled the troop-hold as someone piped music through their helmet's speakers. There was a loud conversation and then what sounded crystals raining from the sky began to compete with the original music. The opposing styles of music were not altogether uncomplimentary. There was good-natured jostling among the Tau and humans as to whose music was superior while the beautiful visages of the T-X's merely took it all in.

"Touchdown in sixty, Marines," their Kor pilot contacted Perry and McClane by their personal comm.'s.

Captain McClane looked at Perry before the General shrugged, "It's your squad."

McClane stood and bellowed in the same motion, "Shut it! We touchdown in less than a minute. Seal your suits, though some of you could 'prolly do with a dose of radiation. Might make you right in the head. Don't forget to 'wine-and-dine' 'em. Sucks when they don't put out cause you didn't treat 'em right."

"Sumah us nevah learn! Right, Stillman?" Sergeant Hayes yelled to her team leader.

"Damnit, Hayes! What don't you understand about shut it!"

"Uhm, tha' it part?"

"After this mission we're going to have us a little chat, Hayes," McClane turned to sit before roaring, "Check your seals and pop your anti-rads!"

Perry suppressed the urge to smile at the familiar antics. The loss of the close camaraderie of leading a squad was something he had yet to come to terms with. He had always nominally commanded the Special Forces in North America but the nature of TechCom had kept his duties no larger than the company level for the most part. Now he was personally responsible for close to two hundred squadrons, their deployments, training, supply, as well as overseeing Special Forces R&D. Sometimes it was very overwhelming.

_No time for that now. Concentrate on the mission._

Perry took a small cylinder from his waist belt and shook two pills into his mouth. They burned all the way down but it was better than dying of acute radiation sickness if his suit was breached. He put on his helmet and locked the seals down. Once his HUD came up and all systems were in the green he 'wined-and-dined' his weapons. Perry placed a fresh battery pack in his plasma carbine and made sure his KE-10 and R-& PAK had full ammo loads. Then he powered up each of his weapons. Around him the air did seen to whine with a squad's worth of high-tech weaponry being activated. After the captain checked his team leaders' seals; Perry checked his. McClane returned the favor and they both reclaimed their seats.

Less than ten seconds after Captain McClane sat the pilot announced, "Touchdown! Good luck, troopers."

Since it was a non-combat landing Captain McClane and General Perry were the first on the ground. The Phantom had landed at one of the four staging areas that had been erected around the Machine-Humans fortress. The landing field was full of ships ferrying Marines and ordinance to the surface. A Marine Captain and a six-Marine security detail marched up to Perry's troopers as the last emerged from the Phantom.

"Welcome to Area One, General," the Captain spoke via his external speakers. "I am Captain Ui'Slay. Preparations are complete, General, if you would follow me."

"Lead the way."

The Captain and his detail about-faced sharply and marched down a path lined by guide-lights set into the ground. Before long the party was quick-stepping through the large compound of armories, barracks, and garages. For such a large encampment there was surprisingly little activity on the rugged streets. They came to the edge of Area One and saw the reason why. A massive cloud of grit and dust billowed up from the direction of the energy shield protecting the fortress. The Captain led them into a garage on their right. It was empty of vehicles but was filled with grimy drilling equipment. In the center of the room was a perfectly cut hole.

The Captain wasted no words and double-timed it down the steep ramp on alloy sheathed hooves. At the bottom, roughly three meters down, was an ovular chamber with a transport sled in the center. The sled was set on a slightly raised platform and hovered a dozen centimeters above the mag-rail.

"It's more than two klicks to the shield," Ui'Slay explained as he and his security team climbed in the control section of the sled.

There were four sections to the sled and there was ample room for Perry's squad. They were off with barely a jolt and accelerated with dizzying speed. The tunnel walls were smooth and oddly reflective because of the molecular bonding used to make them stable. Suddenly the walls changed to the brightly reflective silver that was a trademark of SkyNet engineering and to which the Tau had quite literally taken a shine to.

"The enemy built their fortress with a trench that circles the entire perimeter. Scans indicate it is more than half a kilometer deep. We believe the Machine-Humans may be using geo-thermal energy to provide additional power to their base."

The sled stopped several meters before the tunnel ended. There was a gap of maybe five meters between them and a large drainage tunnel spilling a thick river of brownish-black sludge into the trench.

"McClane," Perry said over the short-range squad-wide channel, "Take Alpha and Charlie to find out if they have secondary or tertiary power sources. I'll take Bravo and Delta to the power core. If they don't have them then secure the evac route." Perry switched to external speakers, "How long until-"

General Perry's question was answered when twenty meters above their heads the electric buzzing of the energy shield vanished. The bridge, a gargantuan monstrosity despite having been constructed in less than forty-eight hours, unleashed a volley of fire from the various automated weapon systems decorating it. Behind this suppressive fire came the first assault wave of Marines being escorted by Hammerhead tanks.

"Permission to join the assault, General?" Captain Ui'Slay asked with a peculiar excitement in his voice.

"Permission granted. Good luck, Captain."

"Thank you, General," the Tau Captain snapped an impressive human salute, "And to you, sir."

Ui'Slay's security detail came to attention and saluted. General Perry returned the salute and the Marines climbed a ladder leading to the scaffolding proper where they could hustle to the assault force.

"Let's go, Marines."

Two of the T-X's in the squad leaped the gap and dug their fingers into the ceiling in order to not be swept away by the crushing flow of sludge. The drainage tunnel was only two meters high and the sludge filled it almost to the top. The Terminators had tow-lines clipped to their waists that led to similar clips on their counterparts on the bridge. The T-X's latched onto the ceiling and settled there with electromagnetic boots and gloves. Perry clipped his waist harness to the taut line and pulled himself across the gap up to the drainage tunnel's ceiling. Once there he placed a palm and foot against it.

"Mag-lock," he spoke softly so his external speakers wouldn't kick in.

Some of the weight on that side of his body disappeared. Perry slowly put his other hand on the ceiling and nodded slightly when that hand adhered to the metallic surface. The T-X's moved further up the tunnel, spooling more line out, and Perry followed. The remainder of the squad quickly joined Perry and the remaining T-X's leaped across the gap to cling to the ceiling.

It was arduous going for the squad. The Terminators could have made much better but the organic element found crawling like spiders a strange mode of locomotion. So it was with more than a little relief that Perry spotted the first maintenance shaft. It was half as large as the drainage tunnel with actual catwalks lining it. In short order Perry and his two Teams were quick-stepping it down one side with McClane's Teams on the other. Perry was in the middle of the formation with the rearguard of Bravo and the point-Marine of Delta flanking him.

Bravo's point-Marine came to a halt and signed for someone to open the hatch blocking the way. Bravo-lead, First Lieutenant Ui'Fade, took up position and signed for everyone to be ready. Perry dropped to one knee and switched his carbine to rail-rifle mode. The Tau and Terminator flanking him dropped prone and remained equally motionless. Once everyone was in position Ui'Fade undogged the hatch and kicked it open in two smooth motions. The T-X in the lead moved through the doorway aggressively with Sergeant Simmons right behind it. Across the shaft Alpha Team replicated the maneuver. No shots echoed back down the shaft and Ui'Fade signed 'all clear' before entering the next room herself.

Perry and his temporary Team quickly joined Bravo. It was a service station for this section of drainage tunnels. A catwalk filled with spare parts and tools lined a pit in which sat two odd-looking hovercraft. From the claws and scooping mechanism in the front Perry guessed it was used to clear large obstructions. The real prize came in the form of a computer terminal four meters to their left. Perry signed for the T-X to interface and the Machine nearly leaped to obey. There was a similar device on the opposite side of the pit. Soon the T-X had directions to the primary power core and the squad took turns downloading it into their navigational computers in case they were separated. Their route would take them almost exclusively through maintenance areas.

Perry was switching his carbine back to plasma-mode when a faint tremor passed through the chamber. Whatever diversion General Conner had planned was undoubtedly having an effect. Perry's Teams went down a ladder well a meter away from their terminal while McClane's crew went through another hatch. Perry silently wished them luck as he climbed down the ladder.

The trek to the power core was almost completely silent except for the light footsteps the Marines could do nothing about. Sometimes the maintenance corridors were so wide an entire Team could walk side-by-side. Other times they were so narrow that the Marines could barely squeeze through with all their gear. The one constant was the machinery that dotted the walls. Some of it looked as though it had not been repaired since Judgment Day.

Once they made it to their objective, a foreboding hatch, Perry had everyone alternate their weapon modes to which suited them the best. The General left his carbine on plasma-mode but undid the safety latch on his R-7 PAK. Bravo Team's T-X was the first through the hatch after Ui'Slay pulled it open. The T-X was pulled upwards, its legs kicking futilely, and then was gone. Almost instantaneously an alert message popped up onto Perry's HUD. It warned that Special Forces Unit-403 was off-line. Sergeant Simmons was through the hatch before the message had appeared with a Boom-Stick in hand. He lobbed it underhand straight up and dove backwards through the hatch. A mechanical claw, that was the impression that Perry go, sheared right through the shields and armor around Simmons' ankle. The Marine's foot came away like a cork and Ui'Fade closed the hatch.

The tremor that shook the corridor went unnoticed as Simmons was tended to by his Team leader and everyone watched. Perry knew that the suit had been breached but the Sergeant's vitals were strong. The S.F.E. had sealed the breach nearly simultaneously with its occurrence.

"One-Five-Three, you take point. Ui'Fade take its spot," Perry glanced down at Simmons who had his back to the wall, "Simmons, watch our exfil. point. Let's move it! We're not getting paid by the hour."

The T-X flanking Perry took point and Lieutenant Ui'Fade took its position. Unit-153 opened the hatch and stepped confidently through with her particle-equipped cannon at the ready. Once the all-clear was given the rest of the unit came out to see the fate of the previous point-Marine.

Pieces were all that was left and they were scattered everywhere.

"Is the CPU salvageable?" Perry asked, trying to set an example for the team leaders on how to deal with Machines in their squad.

"Possibly," Unit-153 answered, picking up a crystalline chip and stowing it in her harness.

"Let's go."

The unit had emerged on an observational balcony overlooking the control area for the power core. The core itself was enclosed inside a massive pylon in the center of the room. Massive banks of monitoring equipment were set up on blast-shields that dotted the four sides of the room. Relatively narrow gaps were left in the massive shields to allow access to the core. Unfortunately energy shields now protected those entry points as well.

"One-Five-Three, hack the shield on this section. Delta, make sure we don't have anymore guests."

Perry looked at the shattered remains of the H/K Guardian that had been blown across the entire balcony. Spider H/K's had been bad enough but Guardians had always been a nightmare to get past. Delta moved down the right ramp and Perry's team moved down the left. As Unit-153 worked the sounds of an intense firefight washed over them seconds before a tremendous explosion shook the room. The three members of Delta-Team came back, one with her shields still visibly recharging, just after the energy shield went down.

"Everyone take a marker. I want it done in less than thirty."

Perry and his Marines moved quickly around the pylon as they placed fusion charges in critical areas to catalyze an irreversible cascade failure of the core's systems. They regrouped, Delta on point, and double-timed it back to the breach in the energy shields. Sergeant Ui'Faye was on point and so it was he that received a rail-round in the head. A warning message that the Sergeant's EEG had flat-lined appeared even before his lifeless body hit the floor. Sergeant Hayes dragged her teammate back with a wordless cry of rage that she unknowingly broadcast over her external speakers.

"Passionate cries of loss?"

The voice made every molecule of Perry's being bristle with profound hatred. He activated the remote viewer of his KE-10 and placed it on the floor just peeking out from the blast shield.

"Don't forget to change position. Don't know if rail-rounds can penetrate the shield." Delta-Lead reminded them all.

Perry changed position but left his KE-10 where it was.

"I thought Captain Perry wanted his Special Forces to be emotionless like the Machines. Has TechCom fallen so far since it betrayed my family?"

A figure parted the ranks of Machine-Humans and a face Perry had dreamt about for months stepped into view. Red hair, baleful green eyes, and a perpetual air of disgust were things Perry had learned to ignore when Alexander Stone was part of General Conner's Recon/Security detail with Reese and Luna. The cybernetic enhancement that had replaced his left eye and hand were new but that only made what he had done worse in Perry's eyes.

"I suppose it doesn't matter how Machine-like TechCom becomes. You're still only human, and alien, and Machine. I never would have thought- Okay, who's going to die first? Who's going to be a hero? Your mission's failed. You probably set your timers for no more than five minutes. This'll take far less than that, trust me, and then I'll disarm your little explosives."

Perry watched the remaining members of the unit as they checked their weapons and switched their fire-modes for maximum kill-radius. That meant a mixture of grenade launchers, rocket modules, and particle attachments. Perry supercharged his plasma-mode, unconcerned that it halved his battery life, and drew his R-7 PAK. There were at least fifty Machine-Humans spread around the blast-shield armed with everything from plasma repeaters to at least one full-fledged missile launcher.

"Aww, the babies not coming out to play?"

_He's gone completely out of his mind_, Perry thought just as a Boom-Stick shook the room.

"Let's rooock!" Simmons screamed, his speakers amplifying the volume tenfold.

"Time to terminate," Perry thought he heard Unit-153 whisper as it passed with two modified particle cannons in at the ready.

Hayes and Stillman went to one knee three meters on either side and fired their entire load of grenades in less than two seconds into the two remaining clusters of standing Machine-Humans. Unit-153 fired sustained beams of particle energy in opposite directions and hosed them across the disoriented ranks of the enemy. Perry caught sight of Stone as the traitor put a high-explosive round point-blank into Simmons helmet. The Sergeant's warning icon came up again but this time the EEG was flat-lined.

_He's not getting away this time_, Perry vowed, scooping up his KE-10 and charging towards the observational balcony.

"Get our people out of here!" he roared to Ui'Fade, the senior Marine team leader, over a private comm.-line, "Double-time it to Evac Alpha." Without thinking Perry crouched and leaped three meters straight up to the guardrail of the balcony. "Don't wait for me! That's an order!"

"But, sir-"

"Do it!"

Perry closed the channel and tried to contact McClane. All he got was comm.-static and the General could only hope McClane's mission had gone more smoothly.

"I.R." Perry commanded and the thermal patterns that Stone had left behind became as clear as day.

The pattern looked like blood-splatter and Perry hoped the bastard was in a lot of pain. Perry raced after the cowardly man through myriad corridors. It seemed as though he would never catch up until he came to a service area hatch. He cautiously stepped through and then sprinted to the edge of the center pit as hard as he could.

Alexander Stone was making his escape via one of the drainage tunnel maintenance craft. Perry jumped four meters into the truck-bed and fired a burst directly at the back of Stone's head. Moving impossibly fast, the traitor ducked to the side and sprang up into the air as the maintenance craft began to move. Perry spun with his carbine at the ready but Stone's right foot connected with the weapon while the other hit Perry directly in the visor. The Marine General was lifted off his feet and hit the forward wall of the truck-bed. A massive tremor shook the structure around them, causing the maintenance craft to veer into a wall, and Stone stumbled. Perry drew his R-7 and fired at Stone's black heart. Somehow the Machine-Human leader dipped a shoulder and the rocket detonated against the ceiling. Stone was on him before Perry could fire again and wrenched the weapon from his startled grasp. Stone grabbed Perry by the throat ribbing and lifted him into the air. Despite the roar of the drainage tunnel they had turned down, Perry could hear every word Stone uttered from his mad lips.

"Well, well, well," Stone gloated, "They thought they could send a fakie after me. I wonder how much pressure your shield system can take before it fizzles and I snap your neck? I've never seen a fakie with a broken neck."

"You always did like the sound of your own voice, Stone."

"Perry?" Stone exclaimed in disbelief and the General chose that moment to fire his KE-10 into the cyborg's gut.

An energy shield flared as Stone was flung against the far side of the truck, dropping Perry in the process, but then fizzled out within two seconds. Stone howled as his flesh was shredded. Without warning Perry's sidearm exploded, driving him back, and a suit-breach warning flared to life on his HUD. Perry held his hand up and noted with a strange detachment that three of his digits were missing and only the locked-down joints of the glove held the other two in place.

_Must be in shock._

Tremors started rocking his body without even asking his permission.

"My how the might have fallen. I remember how afraid I used to be of you three, especially that maniac Reese. They used to call you three invincible, unbeatable, the three warrior-prophets of John Conner. Now look at you. Injured, weak… so very human." Stone stepped close then and held the barrel of his custom-made sidearm to Perry's faceplate. "And me? I'm superior to anything that's ever lived and died. I'll-"

Perry stopped listening because his SFE's automated med-comp finally administered a dose of a very powerful stimulant and painkiller combination that sent Perry into overdrive. In the blink of an eye Perry drew his Tau Dueling Blade with his good hand, activated the particle emitter, and sliced Stone's arm off at the elbow. Perry stood with an underhand lunge to the sternum that Stone backpedaled away from. The nimble cyborg rolled around Perry and came up on his injured side. Perry turned with a leaping knee lift that was dodged with a contemptuous lean. A hand filled Perry's vision when he landed. He felt himself be lifted and then driven towards the floor of the truck-bed. The impact was sensed more than felt because of a sickening wrenching sensation in his neck that diverted all his attention. His hand went limp and released its hold on the Dueling Blade. Stone held Perry's sword-hand up with his own blood-covered stump.

"Turn-about _is_ fairplay, after all," and with a smile Stone sliced Perry's hand off at the wrist.

The paint was muted thanks to the painkiller so Perry's only response was a quiet grunt. Stone grabbed his visor again but this time the cyborg squeezed. Fine cracks spider-webbed across his visual field.

"You want to know why Conner always let us take more risks than Reese. Why he kept Reese, one idiot sergeant out of hundreds, up his ass all the time," Stone whispered intimately, his organic and bloodshot eye peeking from between his fingers. "Why he gave you and Luna so much more leeway after Reese went back? Think about it Perry, though I know your inferior intellect will find it difficult. What mission did he need Reese for? Why did he let him volunteer? He could have ordered you or Luna, both better qualified to go, and you would have gone without hesitation. He could have sent all three of you." Stone squeezed harder and Perry's SFE began to warn him of an impending breach in atmospheric integrity.

The fear of death had long since left the General and all that remained was hatred for the man that held his life in a cybernetic hand.

"I figured it out, Perry. Conner sent Reese back alone to impregnate his bitch of a mother so that he could exist. That's why they had that pathetic father-son relationship even if it was ass-backwards. That's why Conner didn't give a damn about me or my brother. He _knew_ you and Luna would be vital to the Resistance so he never hesitated to save your asses."

"Well, tell me genius, why didn't Reese give the message to put a bullet in you and your brother's brains?"

Stone's face went blank before twisting with madness, "Time's up, Captain."

One more squeeze was all it took for the scrubbed air to begin escaping and for the contaminated air to seep in. Perry was lifted into the air and was shocked to discover the craft was precariously balanced at the end of the drainage tunnel.

"One down, two to go."

_-that should be textbook-_

Perry palmed a fusion charge with his maimed limb and with a twitch activated the spike in his armor's elbow. Stone screamed shrilly when Perry drove his elbow back to pierce the cyborg's organic eye and dropped the General. Perry stood, slapped the charge onto Stone's chest, and a spinning sidekick sent his most hated foe over the edge. Perry watched with a macabre glee as Stone plummeted screaming only to be silenced when the charge obliterated most of his body in a flash of light.

"Activate-" Perry coughed liquidly before continuing, "-transponder. Activate emergency breach proto-"

Perry broke down into hacking coughs that coated the inside of his helmet with blood. A tube extended from near his collar and Perry obligingly opened his mouth. The tube snaked into his mouth and down his trachea where it sent filaments into his lungs to suck out the fluid that was building up. It was not a pleasant feeling but the tube would keep him breathing even if he became unable to do so. Several different drug cocktails were pumped into his bloodstream to keep him alive. He could have survived the radiation in the air and his injuries but breathing caustic industrial run-off was killing him.

The search lights of a ship roused Perry and he wondered when he had passed out into the truck-bed. Then he realized the craft was not ISMC.

General Justin Perry's world became fire and thunder.


	13. Gabriel Stone

The jungle was steamy, dense, and incredibly hot. Heat and dampness did not bother the twelve figures stalking silently down animal trails. The 132nd were safely isolated from the environment by their S.F.E.'s. Each was lightly armed with a KE-10 and stun baton. Their objective was to track and capture a trio of hostiles with sensitive information. So far the squad had found very little evidence that the three were even there.

Alpha Team came to a strop where a tree had fallen to leave a gaping hole in the overhead canopy. Brilliant shades of golden light made the scene almost unnatural in its beauty. The point-Marine hoped onto the trunk and instantly disappeared over the side in a cloud of wood rot. A single shot from a KE-10 split the silence and the team leader's heart skipped a beat when the point-Marine's life signs indicator flat-lined. The team leader opened a comm. line for reinforcements and two figures burst from the thick foliage directly behind him. They stood back-to-back and separated in a flash. The larger, bulkier figure darted towards the closest Marine with blinding speed. There was only time for a startled gasp before the Marine was lifted into the air by a powerful backhand. In an amazing display of hand-eye coordination, the jungle-camouflaged hostile snatched the KE-10 from the Marine's hand in mid-air. Before the other Marine could bring their KE-10 to bear a burst of KE-10 rounds hit them. The team leader had been dealt with in an equally efficient manner by being jabbed in the back with his stun baton.

It was several minutes before the other three Teams began to zero in on Alpha's position.

Bravo Team was crossing beneath a section of forest where the undergrowth was not so thick, when a massive piece of tree trunk flung two Marines away like fluff. The point-Marine fired and was rewarded by a pained shriek. It turned to render assistance to its teammates and a vine descended to hook itself under the Marine's chin. Such was the force of the upward tug that the Marine was jolted seven meters up, at which point the Marine arched into a back flip. Unfortunately when the Marine was nearly horizontal two boots slammed into its neck and lower back. Before it struck the ground a stun baton was jabbed into its cranium.

"Come get some!" the remaining Marine screamed as they backed towards a tree with twin KE-10's sweeping the jungle.

The Marine did not see the hostile that was hanging upside down against the tree his back was approaching. A single shot was fire and the three hostiles faded into the jungle as abruptly as they had appeared.

Delta Team succumbed when a squadmate fell into a deep pit trap. Everyone except the T-X turned towards their struggling comrade. The Marine nearest the pit was shot twice in the sternum and fell with one leg dangling over the edge. Only a single KE-10 returned automatic fire on the sniper. The Marine firing turned to find that the T-X was gone. A tiny noise made the Marine turned around just enough to take the stun baton in the side. The hostile was swinging on a vine and their momentum, combined with the power of the blow, catapulted the Marine into the air to bounce several meters before coming to a standstill. The Marine in the pit, remembering that the S.F.E., V2, amplified a user's strength much higher than the previous version, managed to leap high enough to grab the edge of the pit. A pair of green-gray patterned boots was his first sight just before the distinctive sound of a KE-10 firing took the world away.

Charlie Team was waist-deep in muddy water as they crossed a flooded gully. The T-X reported no enemy life signs in the water but the team leader still didn't entirely trust the Machines in the squad. When the boot of the T-X touched a particular patch of the mud the water churned to explosive life.

"Fire!" after losing contact with the other three Teams the team leader was taking no chances.

Shapes twisted and danced in the dispersing clouds of water vapor caused by the tremendous volume of fire.

One.

Two.

Then a third shot from a KE-10 was fired.

By the time the other two hostiles arrived the last Team was down. The largest one removed his mask and observed the three bodies floating in the water.

"That was risky, Khory," Templar admonished, "Why didn't you wait?"

Khory and Boomer followed suit in removing their masks.

"You two were out of position when they were in. I figured I could take them out or stall 'em long enough for you to render assistance."

"Next time let them pass-"

Before Templar could say more a surveillance drone decloaked several meters above their heads.

"Exercise over. Please remain where you are. A medical team will arrive shortly."

The "dead" members of Charlie Team twitched to life as their S.F.E.'s reactivated. Each stood and surveyed their surroundings in a sedate manner before removing their helmets. Overhead the sun was an artificial construct at the apex of a colossal dome that was only partially complete. Fully two-thirds of the dome was bare-metal framework. When complete the dome's interior would have its own weather system. The exercise had taken place in the advanced jungle training environment designed for Special Forces and Pathfinders. There were going to be two layers of training environment in the BattleDome, each representing a variety of terrains. The circular center of the 'Dome, easily two kilometers in diameter, was divided into areas for Marine basic training before training platoons were allowed into the line infantry training environments. Construction on the massive installation had been going day and night for nearly three months.

"What is troubling you, Boomer?" Templar asked, noticing how withdrawn his usually talkative companion was.

"This used to be my squad," Boomer replied in a low, monotone that only his comrades could hear.

The two Fire Warriors of Charlie Team clustered together and made no attempt to hide their scrutiny of Templar. Khory and her Special Forces counterpart stared blankly at each other. The lone human of the team had his eyes fixed on Templar until something caused him to glance in Boomer's direction.

"Boomer?" Valentine's voice was enough to jolt Boomer from his introspection.

Valentine crashed into Boomer, remembering too late that he was wearing an exoskeleton, and was shocked when Boomer took the impact with very little give.

"We thought you were still MIA. Damn it's good to see you. We could use some good news."

MIA was a polite way to reference a fellow TechCom vet that had taken the long walk. Boomer had no doubt that Valentine had meant the squad had thought he was dead.

"Has somethin' happened?"

Valentine looked at him as though Boomer had just grown an extra head. It was then that Boomer noticed what intense shades of green Valentine's eyes were. It was the first time Boomer had seen his former squadmate in bright light without them both wearing combat helmets. Valentine's intense gaze was somewhat unsettling.

"Where you been, Boomer? Mars? They found a whole damn city of Machine-Humans in the badlands out west. They say four Covenant Battleships were destroyed and an entire division of line, too. They sent in a Forces squad but they were wiped out." Valentine paused for a moment as if the next words were particularly difficult to let go. "Rumor is Perry bought it."

Boomer was so stunned that the arrival of the medi-vac barely registered.

"I don't believe it," Boomer said as human and Tau med-techs rushed out of the cylindrical body of the vehicle. "How's the saying go? Don't believe they're dead-"

"-until you meet the replacement. I know Boomer, but it's been three weeks since anyone I've talked to's seen the captain- I mean General."

Boomer grinned, "Take's a little getting used to, doesn't it?"

A tall, human woman in the white jumpsuit and crimson visor of a med-tech approached them, "You're the last. Are you injured?"

The two shook their heads but the med-tech still placed a finger to her visor as she scanned them.

"You both check out. Get on board," with that said the med-tech about-faced and walked up the rear-entry ramp of the medi-vac.

"Don't we technically outrank her?"

Boomer shrugged, "Some of us haven't been promoted, Lieutenant."

Together they walked up the ramp and entered the medical bay. There was a cleared area at the end of the bay for major surgeries but the vast majority of the space was taken up by crash-seats that doubled as patient beds. There were enough seats for twenty Marines. The others were already seated and Boomer stopped as he saw how the bay was divided. The Fire Warriors, the most numerous group, sat along the starboard side. Three humans sat at the far end of the port side while the four T-X's sat at the other end. In the middle of the port side sat Boomer's two comrades. Boomer had a choice to make and he didn't like it at all. He hadn't talked to any humans that weren't scientists, technicians, or upper echelon officers in months. The urge to join his former squadmates was strong but his comrades had chosen to stick together.

Could he do any less?

"The guys are gonna be…" Valentine trailed off when Boomer nodded to Khory and Templar before sitting in the seat they had saved between them. "Uhm, Boomer, you going to sit with us."

"We can talk once we get back to training HQ for eval. It looks like everyone's sitting with their squad so I'm doing the same."

Valentine grinned, "You stubborn bastard. Yuri always did like that about you."

Boomer nodded, Yuri's smile in his head, and Valentine moved on.

A minute later Valentine was reluctantly brought back by two more former squadmates of Boomer's.

"Well, look at you, Boomer. Looks like you've been doin' well for a deserter." Arn said, the scar on her mouth turned her every expression into one of mild disgust.

"We all thought he was dead and here he was getting himself _enhanced_," Xan said, his unlined mouth drawn down into almost an exact replica of Arn's. "Yeah, we've all heard the rumors. Commands thinks you three are the Second Coming or something. Do they know what kind of jinx you are, Boomer?"

"What the hell are you guys talking about?" Valentine asked, placing a hand on Arn's shoulder that was immediately shrugged off.

"We did some checking and every squad that Boomer's been in had had some heavy shit happen to them. His first squad got hit by an H/K raiding party." Xan seemed to grow taller with every hate-filled word he uttered. "Only him and his sergeant made it. Of course they completed the mission and Boomer was promoted for it."

"That just means he's lucky."

"Give me a break, Valentine," Arn spat, turning slightly to pierce him with her gaze, "The last squad he was in got ambushed on the way to that crappy town where he latched onto us. More than half of 'em were killed."

"Between the first and last he was transferred multiple times to the best units because he was lucky and survived. Only now I'm thinkin' maybe it wasn't luck."

"What else could it have been?" Valentine asked, his brow furrowed.

Xan's face scrunched with hate, "Maybe he was a fakie the whole time?"

"Nah, I saw Boomer and Yuri doin' it. You two're crazy!"

"I heard they can do it now," Arn said, leaning in close so Boomer could see deep into her dark brown eyes. "Is that what happened? You let Yuri die so you could upgrade to some fakie cu-!"

In the blink of an eye Boomer grabbed Arm by the neck and lifted her up to the ceiling. Xan went for his sidearm but Khory grabbed his hand before it reached that destination. With minimal effort she pulled him into her lap and hugged him close. Valentine was frozen in shock but couldn't believe what his squadmates were doing. The Tau and T-X's were watching with interest but did nothing to intervene. The newcomer to the 132nd, Sergeant Giatoli, held his sidearm trained on Boomer. The old squad would have been ready to take Boomer and his crew apart.

"I think you need to go sit down, Arn, and think about what you said. You've just accused General Conner and General Perry of outright stupidity. If I was a fakie why are they still alive?" Boomer pulled Arn close so that _she_ could look into _his_ eyes. "And remember this. If you ever disrespect Yuri's memory again, I'll kill you."

Boomer let Arn drop to her feet and calmly took his seat again. Valentine, the shocked look still etched onto his face, helped Arn back to her crash-seat. Xan was released and quickly joined them. The four human members of the 132nd took their seats and waved off the attentions of the med-tech that tried to examine Arn. The rest of the squad quickly went back to what they had been doing prior to the scuffle.

The Triad merely settled back into their crash-seats unconcerned.

* * *

"I heard you three had a little excitement today after the exercise," Doctor Yurikov said as she entered the performance evaluation room they had been assigned.

BattleDome headquarters was a honeycombed structure built high on the southeastern wall of the dome itself. The Triad, being a high-clearance project, had been assigned their own section. Dr. Yurikov continued to monitor their training while the other scientists worked to refine the techniques that had created them.

"It was just a slight difference of opinion that Sergeant Redman helped rectify," Templar explained with a touch of diplomacy.

Dr. Yurikov smiled at the veteran Fire Warrior, "Is that true, Khory?"

"That's an accurate assessment, Doctor."

"Hmph," the doctor grumbled, though she was obviously pleased by how the three stuck together. "As of six hundred hours, Triad Unit Prime has been officially activated. Henceforth you will all hold the rank of Captain in both the Fleet and Marine Corps. Congratulations."

Templar felt a sense of pride and elation that his new unit was finally being brought up to operational status. There was also a deeper, more unsettling feeling of eagerness for battle. The Fire Warrior had fought a growing bloodlust ever since they had altered him. Meditation helped but sometimes it felt as if nothing would soothe his lust for battle except the bodies of The Trinity's enemies.

"If you will follow me. I'll lead you to your briefing."

The Triad followed the doctor out of the small room and down several gleaming corridors to a lift. This part of BattleDome Command and Control was sparsely populated. The four rode up three levels and then the lift stopped between levels. Dr. Yurikov placed her hand on the panel beneath the control pad and hidden doors adjacent to the primary doors slid open. The Triad followed Yurikov down a heavily guarded corridor. T-850's, Fire Warrior, and Terrans guarded every doorway they passed. An entire fire team had even been posted at the elevator. They were nearing the end of the hall when the doctor turned towards a non-descript door on their left. She calmly waited while the Terran Marine used a handheld scanner on her.

"Proceed," he said, but when Templar moved up the guard held out the scanner again.

"Sergeant," Yurikov said from the open door, "That won't work on them. Just look at them through your HUD for a moment."

"But they're not wear-" the sergeant stopped talking abruptly, "P-proceed."

It made Templar wonder what came up on the man's HUD. Templar generally turned off his ocular implants when they weren't training so he had no idea what the Triad's information looked like outside their Battle-Suits.

The room they entered was obviously a medical center. Banks of machinery surrounded a single bed in the center of the ovular room. Behind the circle of diagnostic and monitoring equipment was what looked like a surgical station. Large suspension tanks were built into the right and left walls. Another fire team stood to either side of the door but let them pass unchallenged.

Standing beside the bed were three figures that were already legends in the ISMC. Captain Catherine Luna, General John Conner, and General O'Kais all wore identical fatigues of gray-black. Lying in the bed, one side of his face covered in a shell of clear, hardened trauma-gel, was General Perry. The General's torso, up to his neck, was covered by a tubular device that was connected to the bed. One arm ended in a smooth stump while the other was whole but badly burned. Both appendages were covered in trauma-gel. Perry's decency was barely maintained by a loincloth. Oddly enough both legs seemed perfectly fine.

"Triad-Prime, reporting for duty!" Templar and his unit saluted smartly as they paused in the gap between rows of machinery.

The three officers returned the salute and, to the Triad's surprise, so did General Perry with his whole limb.

"At ease," General Conner told them and Boomer wasted no time getting to his commander's side.

"What happened?" Boomer asked through clenched teeth, as the other walked at a more sedate pace.

"Have you heard the rumor about him being dead?" Luna asked in her husky accent and Boomer nodded.

"Well, it was almost the truth." Perry's voice seemed to come from all around them. The grievously wounded General swiveled his head to fix his uncovered, bloodshot eye on Boomer. "I still say I look better than you did in that rats nest in Carolina."

"You do," to everyone except Boomer and Templar the response from Khory was a complete surprise.

"What happened…" Luna began with a glare at Perry, "-was that Perry led a squad into a heavily fortified enemy position and abandoned them for revenge. He just barely survived that fight and then, mostly 'cause of luck, he was saved by a wing of Reapers before he got his ass blown up."

"The fight wasn't that one-sided, Luna."

Luna then unleashed a rapid-fire speech in Spanish that made Templar glad he didn't have a translation code for the language yet.

"That's enough, Luna," General Conner spoke commandingly and Luna's mouth snapped shut, "Perry, if you will."

A holographic representation of the Earth appeared above Perry's bed. It was stopped so that the Triad Faced North and South America.

"This," a large red dot appeared somewhere in the southwestern United States, "-is where the Machine-Humans base was. Since then we have determined that it was only the Command-and-Control base for the western hemisphere." At least a dozen red dots appeared throughout the former U.S. and Canadian territories. There were more scattered throughout parts of Europe, Africa, and the Pacific Islands. "As far as we can ascertain the Machine-Human forces are drones controlled by a central intelligence guided by whoever commands the base. Once General Perry eliminated that person these factories went off-line."

"Factories?" Dr. Yurikov asked, knowing the breech of protocol would have few consequences for her.

"Yes; manufacturing a nanovirus designed to kill every Tau, Human, and Machine on the planet." O'Kais explained, sounding deeply disturbed by the very idea.

"How come I wasn't told!" the doctor nearly shouted.

"You already have your hands full, doctor. There are other qualified personnel in the Medical Corps." General Conner told her in a stern voice.

"Of course, General," Yurikov relented with a nod.

"Unfortunately that left us with one Gabriel Stone and the network he oversees."

This time the dot was green and located somewhere in Eastern Europe.

"We acquired this intel from the destroyed base so we have to assume Gabriel is prepared for a full-scale assault. Our losses in the last assault numbered in excess of three thousand Marines. For a single assault that is unacceptable, so ISMC Command has deemed fit to activate the Triad."

O'Kais began speaking as if it was rehearsed, "R and D has perfected Spatial Displacement technology and that will be your infiltration vehicle." A wire-frame image of a vast complex filled the globe. "Here," the image magnified to a mid-sized room, "-will be your Displacement Zone. Your two objectives will be detonation of the power core and termination of Gabriel Stone. The route to the power core will be uploaded to your Battle-Suits. Finding Gabriel Stone will be entirely up to you.

"Now," Perry picked up and Templar firmly believed they had planned the entire briefing beforehand, "Here's what to expect."

* * *

The Triad had been taken to an R&D facility in the area south of the ruins of Los Angeles. They had been given eight hours of sack time and their deployment was four hours later. Boomer had taken his customary hour long shower; the luxury of unlimited amounts of clean water was still new, while Templar had gone to consult the base's resident Ethereal. Khory had left to visit the T-X's that were stationed there. Boomer found it vaguely troubling that Terminators evidently required social interaction.

Now Boomer sat at the edge of a bunk wrapped in a decadently soft towel. He was looking at his hands, larger and definitely more muscular than they had been months ago, with Arn's words filling his head. His Triad had been given a small common barrack for their own use. At the far end the door silently whisked open and Khory walked in. Boomer looked at her and marveled at how much the Machine had changed. She no longer walked with a mechanically precise sway to enhance her seductiveness. Khory walked with a straightforward military cadence that had just a bit of an organic element of chaos to it. She actually blinked like a person, sometimes every second, sometimes not for several.

"Hey, Boomer," Khory greeted him as she stretched out on her bunk.

The fact that Khory and Templar always bunked next to him was suddenly very irritating.

"Why do you do that?" Boomer asked, glaring at her from the corner of his eye.

"Do what?" Khory asked right back as she sat up on her elbows.

"Act human." Khory's face actually registered hurt. "Stop that. You don't have feelings, Oh-One-Two. Right?"

"Affirmative," now Khory's face was utterly devoid of expression.

"Stand up." Khory did, "I want to see you naked."

Khory's clothes rippled in a non-existent breeze and were gone. She was a physically perfect woman, enough to make any man hunger at the sight of her, but that was not what Boomer wanted to see.

"All the way, Oh-One-Two."

There was a moment of hesitation and then Khory's skin tone seemed to melt away to be replaced by the liquid, mercurial substance that was her true skin. Then it all began to retreat, from her extremities first, toward her core. Each centimeter revealed the cold, metallic alloy that was Khory's true self. When the last bit vanished with a whirlpool motion into, ironically enough, where her sex organs would be, T-X Unit-012 looked every inch the killing Machine that she was designed to be.

It was disgusting how they had tried to mold Khory's body so it resembled a human's. Almost every inch of her had muscle definition of some type. The most glaring exceptions were her head and the place her womb should have been. Her skull looked just like a metallic head, there was no hiding that fact, and instead of a womb Khory had a superdense sphere of polymimetic alloy surrounded by a powerful force field.

Hatred welled up within Boomer at the sight of Khory's undisguised malevolent nature. It was a _Machine_ and could never be human.

"Have you seen enough?" Khory asked, her voice mechanical and precise.

Before Boomer could answer the door slid open and Templar stepped into the room. Khory turned to him and the Fire Warrior's eyes narrowed when he saw her naked form.

"Would someone care to explain?" Templar asked, his voice carefully neutral.

"Boomer was just curious about my design."

Boomer nodded when Templar looked to him. Khory reverted back to her customary appearance and the matter was dropped.

Boomer vowed to not forget that Khory was _not_ human. Because deep inside some of what Arn had said held a kernel of truth.

_I'll never forget._

* * *

The Spatial Displacement Chamber was large enough to hold a full squad of Marines. Templar, Boomer, and Khory stood in the center of the circular chamber and seemed to fill it with their very presence.

Each had been covered in a thin gel that partially solidified into a skintight bodysuit. It was similar to trauma-gel but also increased the efficiency of muscle-to-Suit interaction. Putting on a Triad Battle-Suit was relatively easy. The back opened up down the middle and all a body needed to do was slide in. Each Triad member could have donned the suit without assistance but a normal human would have found the sixty kilograms of weight a bit much.

Now they stood in their respective Battle-Suits, V5 plasma weapons at rest, while their armor had conspicuous bulges everywhere imaginable. Each of them carried a varied assortment of tactical gear.

_Hopefully we won't need it all_, Templar thought as he examined the walls of the Displacement Chamber.

There was obvious instrumentation protruding from the walls and for some reason that discomforted him.

"Displacement will begin in ten seconds, Triad-Prime. Good luck and I'll see you at the evac." General Conner's voice came through Templar's comm.

Templar resisted the urge to laugh. Even if they were unsuccessful, and were captured or killed, the mission would still go forward. Their power cores were potential tactical fusion bombs and would definitely be enough to severely compromise, if not destroy, the Machine-Human base.

"Are you ready?" Templar asked, switching to the Triad's private channel with a mental command.

"Affirmative," Khory's speech was still terse and artificial.

"Always," Boomer's was nearly the same as Khory's.

"Whatever happened between you two I want left here. Am I understood?"

"Yes, sir," they both answered in unison.

"Displacement in five… four… three… two… one…"

The room began to spin, or maybe they were spinning, it was hard to discern. Crackling lines of electrical energy began licking at the walls. The flickering light grew in intensity, along with a steadily increasing thrum, until it filled Templar's HUD. The HUD filled with static just as a soundless thunderclap enveloped them. There was some sensation of motion but little else for at least several seconds.

Then the light slowly began to fade to reveal their fate. Their destination was far larger than they had anticipated and not deserted. It seemed to be a general assembly area. Over a thousand pairs of hostile eyes turned in their direction and they were armed.

"Ceiling." Templar said as his comrades stood back-to-back with him.

Together the Triad bent their knees slightly and shot towards the ceiling ten meters above their heads. Plasma bolts of varying wattage tried to track them but they had moved too fast. With sheer muscle power the Triad bent their legs up and straightened so that they were arrowing towards the ceiling feet-first. Mag-locks were achieved on the ceiling through mental commands. As soon as their boots had partial locks they scattered.

Beneath them the ranks of Machine-Humans tried to track them with their weapons while three cylinders went unnoticed among their ranks.

Templar nearly stumbled and lost his footing when the Boom-Sticks detonated. The trio of blasts left huge gaps in the ranks of Machine-Humans.

"Khory, exit. Boomer, cover." A silver and green light winked once in the center of his HUD.

Templar raced towards the stage/control panel at the front of the room. He was hoping Gabriel Stone was there and they could finish half their mission.

A shape, half-seen through the debris the Boom-Stick's and Boomer's antics with his grenade launcher had kicked up, sat on the wall above the stage. Templar's BattleSuit's computer almost immediately identified it as a modified Guardian Hunter-Killer. A red line went from his targeting reticule to trace an outline around a particular area on the machines forward optics cluster. Templar, on the run and upside down, converted his carbine to sniper mode. Without missing a step Templar put a rail-round dead center into the target's soft spot. There was no movement for a moment and then the legs jerks once. The dead bulk of the Guardian crushed the stage like a can and obscured Templar's next shot at the figure fleeing out of an armored bulkhead.

"I've located an exit," Khory said, and Templar made the mistake of stopping to turn around.

A rail-round hit his leg, completely depleting his primary shield, and the impact made him tumble from the ceiling. Before he knew what was happening the Fire Warrior was falling to the floor. At least twenty Machine-Humans were waiting for him with deadly anticipation.

A firestorm of plasma cannon bolts obliterated those waiting for Templar. He looked in the direction the fire was coming from and was impressed with the amount of plasma his comrades were putting out on his behalf. Templar flipped, landing on his hoof-claws, and bounded back into the air. Flying was still new to him but Templar managed to make it to the vent port Khory and Boomer were providing cover from.

"Lead the way, Khory," Templar said, as he converted his carbine to plasma fire.

Khory about-faced and raced down the narrow vent as fast as she could with her enormous plasma cannons. Templar and Boomer dropped a pair of Boom-Sticks before making their escape. A transparent map superimposed itself in his lower right visual field. Khory appeared as a silver dot, Boomer as a green, and Templar as a red. Boomer fell back ten meters to cover the rear while Khory widened her lead to the same distance. In this way the Triad raced through the Machine-Human base. They dropped down five-meter long maintenance shafts, as well as jumping up them when necessary, through rooms suspiciously devoid of activity. On more than one occasion the Triad became embroiled in intense running firefights. There was little doubt in Templar's mind that the enemy knew exactly where they were headed.

The three regrouped inside a small maintenance elevator that would drop them off on a scaffold right above the power core.

"How are we doing this?" Boomer asked over his external speakers, surprising Templar with the surety in his voice that the Fire Warrior would have a plan.

With a mental shiver Templar realized he did have a plan.

"We have to assume they know where we are. They probably have a heavy weapons battery trained on the scaffold." Templar was so sure of it he could almost see the enemy's deployment. "How many EMP grenades do you have, Boomer?"

* * *

The Machine-Human Guardian waited almost directly beneath the vent shaft. A full squad of Machine-Humans armed with plasma cannons and rail-rifle waited on its flanks. When the elevator began to descend the Machine-Humans tensed as one. There was no emotion in the action; their lobotomized brains were utterly incapable of it, but a conditioned response to imminent battle. One Machine-Human's enhanced cortex misfired and it let loose a single shot that harmlessly passed through the open elevator. Sitting inside the waist-high compartment were six spheres linked together in a translucent blue-green gel. The de-facto squad leader reached out to examine the device and his body heat activated it.

The electromagnetic pulse that was released killed the Machine-Human squad and caused the Guardian to go into emergency shutdown mode. The pulse encompassed the entire room and the only electronics that were entirely unaffected was the heavily shielded power core. For thirty seconds the entire force in the core room was rendered blind and deaf to the outside world. Five seconds before that time ended the main doors blew open and the shattered hulk of a Guardian bounced through.

Three figures walked through the debris with weapons in hand and began to wield them without mercy.

* * *

The next minute and a half of Templar's life was a chaotic mixture of streaking plasma bolts, explosions, and the scattered bodies of fallen enemies. There were only two constants and those were the two people at his back. Khory was on his left with her twin particle-modified cannons sweeping out crackling lines of death across their path. Boomer was on his right with an R-7 PAK in one hand and his rocket-modified carbine in the other. Templar had the middle and picked off the more dangerous targets with his rail-modified carbine.

Soon there was only one more cluster of foes. Two Guardians and a squad of Machine-Humans were waiting for them in front of the controls for the energy shield protecting the core. Templar stepped around a blast-shield and fired two rail-rounds that put the Guardian out of commission. Boomer came up beside him and fired two rockets from either hand. The detonations wiped out the remaining Machine-Humans.

"Gabriel Stone, identified," Khory spoke up suddenly.

"Can you track him?" Templar asked anxiously.

"Trace locked. Yes, I can."

Khory sprinted through the debris field and they were right behind her. The Triad moved with such blistering speed that Stone only made it down two corridors before ducking into a room. Khory, her Terminator code not designed for subtlety, kicked the door off its tracks, and strode in with lethal intent.

All three were brought up short by what they saw.

The room was enormous, twice as large as the assembly area, and filled with hundreds of rows of stasis tanks. Bodies, some obviously children, floated in each tank. Each was fitted with a multitude of mechanical apparatus. Some of the machines were modifying the humans even while the Triad watched.

"Perry?" Boomer questioned in numbed horror as one body's face came into view.

The left side of Perry's face was being systematically replaced with cybernetic implants.

"Do you like them?" an oily voice seemed to come from everywhere, "Magnificent, aren't they?"

"I have a lock," Khory said over the comm., quietly shifting her plasma cannon to its rail-rifle configuration.

"She can't fire!" Boomer hissed, "Those are people in those tanks."

"Silence, huh? Are you clones, too? I wouldn't put it pass SkyNet but to think General Conner would allow it. Well, if you're not going to talk, I'm going to go." Stone chuckled in the most obscene fashion then. "Don't pretend as if you'll fire. I'm willing to bet my life, obviously, that even Terminators are forbidden to take innocent-"

Templar was about to order Khory to fire when the T-X fired of her own volition. The round shattered at least a dozen tanks, visibly drilling fist-sized holes through five clones, before severing Gabriel Stone's cybernetic spine. Khory walked up to the megalomaniac and calmly sighted on his hate-filled gaze.

"You bet wrong."

Khory fired a single shot and turned back to them. Boomer was cradling the body of the Perry clone but the hole in the clone's body was fatal.

"You… _machine!_" Boomer roared and a visible shockwave hurled Khory up to the ceiling.

Templar turned to Boomer in shock but quickly turned to check on Khory. Her primary shield quickly flared out and he knew he secondary wouldn't last long.

"Boomer!" Templar yelled, dragging Boomer closer by his carbine strap, "Stop it! You're killing her!"

"It, sir, it. She killed them, sir."

Boomer sounded broken and Templar's heart sank.

"She's your friend, Boomer! We don't kill our friends!"

Boomer turned to Templar then and Khory was released. To no one's surprise the T-X landed on her feet.

"How can a machine be my friend?" Boomer asked, and Templar felt deeply for his torn comrade.

Templar was acting team leader and he should have seen the signs.

"The same way I am, Boomer. Let's go contact HQ and give them an update. I don't think they'll want to blow the place now."

Boomer turned to go and Khory was wisely silent.

"Would you have-?"

"She read my mind, Boomer. Believe it."


	14. Deliverance

It was a city of the dead. Fire Warrior DarkBlade was not unused to the scenario. What made this city unique in his experience was one very simple fact.

The dead seemed to have acquired a need for living flesh.

At first the Fire Warrior and his comrades had not believed the frantic transmissions coming from the Race garrisons. Then more had come from the Elite garrisons closer to the city's center. Less than twenty-four hours later all Tau garrisons on the outskirts of the city were only getting static on their communication equipment. Pathfinders had been sent into the inner city. Less than half of them returned with horrific reports of animated corpses and horrible mutations running rampant in the interior. The Auns in command of the Tau component of the city's guard had sent an urgent message to the small Hegemony Fleet in high orbit.

The message had been sent over a week ago, DarkBlade had long given up counting the days since they all blended into one another, and officially there had been no response. Unofficially, as most barracks gossip was, the fleet had sent a message composed of one line of text.

_**May the gods of your people embrace you.**_

DarkBlade doubted if that had been the true message but the intent was clear. There would be no help coming and DarkBlade doubted if any shuttles would be greeted with open arms. There were five Tau garrisons, two thousand assorted Tau each, in this city alone. If reports from the other cities were any indication there were no true safe havens. Wild theories and ideas about a course of action ran rampant through the base. There was little question as to how this had happened or who was responsible.

_It does not matter_, DarkBlade thought as he turned to gaze at the beautiful sun slowly sinking into the vibrant blue-green ocean.

There were _some_ benefits to being stationed on a world covered in ocean but DarkBlade would have given all of them up for a place to fallback to. DarkBlade's squad leader passed by and quietly asked his about his weapon charges and rations, before he moved to the next trooper on the wall. DarkBlade's cadre was assigned to the east wall above the vehicle garage. A long, wide throughway led right up to the garage's doors. Piles of stinking, rotting corpses filled the street. The blast doors had been destroyed by dozens of mutated Hunters on the fifth or six night of the siege. The Fire Warrior in command of the garrison had set up a trio of plasma rocket batteries to cover the entrance from inside the garage and that was the only reason they had held out that night. Most of the creatures were dormant during the day and that provided the beleaguered Fire Warriors a needed respite during daylight hours.

"Another beautiful night in the Hegemony, DarkBlade?" a beautiful Fire Warrior said just before she put on her helmet.

"Indeed," DarkBlade already had his helmet on, in fact he couldn't remember if he had even taken it off today except to grab a quick bite of a tasteless ration bar.

_If I live through the night I should probably clean my armor_, the thoughts of such a routine task seemed utterly bizarre to him under the current circumstances.

A low moan wafted across the wide avenue but it was just the wind.

"Sensor contacts," a Fio technician was providing this section of perimeter with on-the-spot intelligence, "Range three hundred meters and closing fast."

"Check your data," the cadre-commander, Lusha, spoke gruffly, "No visual contact. I repeat. No visual contact."

"Data is reliable, commander. Range at one hundred meters."

Now the moaning came from a tide of quickly shuffling bodies at the far end of the road.

"Remember to conserve your ammo," DarkBlade's squad leader called over the communicator in their helmets.

The sun was almost completely gone and the commander gave the order for the floodlights to be activated. Blue-white light, eerie in its brilliance brought the avenue into stark relief. It looked to be the biggest group yet. The black tide stretched as far as DarkBlade could see. Someone had said, he couldn't remember who, that all the noise was attracting the creatures in greater numbers. It looked like that Fire Warrior had been correct.

"Range is twenty meters."

"Visual?" Lusha asked over the cadre-wide channel.

"Negative," were the responses of all his squad leaders as the leading edge of the horde was at least one hundred meters away.

There was no warning as the ground ten meters below them spewed forth gigantic monstrosities. DarkBlade peered over the parapet and gaped in horror at the five-meter long worms that had erupted from the ground. They were armored in something akin to Hunter armor and on their backs…

"Down!" DarkBlade roared just as the worm-behemoth beneath him fired all four fuel-rod cannons embedded into its back.

What was issued from the cannons was not what DarkBlade expected. Thick, gray-green globs of viscous fluid arced up and onto the wall. One trooper beside DarkBlade was hit in the back of the head. The Fire Warrior only managed one scream before his helmet and then cranium were reduced to a boiling pile of slag.

"Grenades!" DeathKnight, his squad leader, barked and the eleven Fire Warriors in the squad tossed Tau hand grenades over the wall.

A hail of grenades cascaded down upon the worms and the mutants began to shoot their corrosive emissions at the barricades the Fio's had welded in place. The detonations came so close together that they were indistinguishable. Grenades were a finite resource so it was no surprise to anyone that the order to desist was quickly given by the cadre-commander.

DarkBlade's breath came a bit more quickly than he would have liked as he waited for the debris to clear with his Covenant plasma rifle at the ready. A massive shadow raced through the debris and a metallic crunching filled the air.

"Fire!"

DarkBlade was already depressing the firing stud when the order was given. The backwash from dozens of plasma rifles being fired cleared the dust that choked the air. There had been five of the mutants and now there were two. It was hard to imagine anything that could come through such a barrage of grenades almost completely unscathed.

"Volley fire on the mob," DeathKnight directed quite calmly, "The rocket batteries will eliminate those things."

DarkBlade stepped back and a trooper from another squad took his place. He noted with horror that the mob had broken into a shambling run. Out in front, just like the last attacks, were a mixture of Jackals and Grunts. The Grunts were without their methane masks, freeing their deceptively sharp teeth, and both species had switched to a quadruped format. It did not seem to matter that most of them had grievous wounds that continually leaked ichors. The forerunners were closing the distance rapidly.

"Fire!" came the shouted order and a wall of energy hit the advance wave.

It was a brilliant combination of Covenant plasma rifle, Tau pulse rifle, and whatever weapons had been stockpiled in the garrison armories. The energy bolts hit low, obliterating the limbs of many, in order to slow the enemy advance. It was how so many small mountains of rotting bodies had been built. Explosions, rocket detonations from the sound, rocked the entire building. DarkBlade turned to the north wall and was not surprised to see the tell-tale flash of plasma weaponry.

DarkBlade's plasma rifle had long since cooled down and he returned to the line as the trooper in front of him fell back to reload his pulse carbine. The veteran Fire Warrior was firing before he settled against the chest-high wall. The undying mob had only seemed to grow despite its losses. The mountain of corpses could not grow because the pressure kept making the mob push around any potential obstruction. There was little doubt that many were being crushed in the inexorable advance.

"Take cover!" Lusha roared and seconds after the squad did, an explosion shook the building beneath them.

Purple-white spears of light exploded spectacularly against the mob. Four meter swathes of crowd were cleared by one rocket. These gaps were quickly filled up by the flesh-craving maniacs.

The mob's range had closed to fifty meters.

A figure, brandishing a staff with a glowing orb atop it stepped to DarkBlade's side.

"Aun," DarkBlade bowed respectfully as he stepped back.

His plasma rifle's charge was empty so DarkBlade went to a nearby armory station to replace it. When he returned with a Covenant carbine and two full clips, the Aun and Lusha were talking.

"We can not hold for another night, Aun. That is my honest opinion. We may not hold _this_ night."

The Aun smiled serenely, "Our salvation is at hand. The One Path truly blesses us this night."

"Five meters!"

DarkBlade rushed to the wall and began firing indiscriminately at the foreheads of every target that came up in his reticule. The volume of outgoing fire increased so dramatically that it seemed as though the enemy could just walk to them. Yet they still continued to close the distance to the wall.

"Grenades!"

DarkBlade tossed his last two grenades into the front of the mass. This time the rain of grenades had a less dramatic effect. The leading edge had been destroyed but those five meters behind continued shambling forward into more plasma fire.

"Incoming aerocraft," the Fio's announcement was like an audible tremor in the ranks of Fire Warriors. "ETA is thirty seconds."

"It can't be the Hegemony," whispered as he shot a Pathfinder that was missing both arms.

"It is our salvation," the Aun told Lusha.

The toughest foe DarkBlade had ever faced was within three meters of the wall when a Covenant Phantom soared over his head. It hovered directly above the leading edge and began to unleash its might. Plasma rockets arced from its back while its plasma turrets spat forth nearly solid bands of plasma. Several more joined it while off in the distance, where the mob continued, darting shapes dropped plasma bombs amidst sonic booms.

Anti-gravity pods made the building subtly vibrate and DarkBlade turned to see an Orca-class shuttle settling on the hundred-meter diameter landing pad. Fire Warriors, their armor gleaming, erupted from the shuttle almost before the ramp was down. They flowed to the north and east wall in a smooth, fluid manner that made DarkBlade slightly envious.

A Tau commander, head bare, approached the Aun and Lusha. Flaking this commander were two Fire Warriors wielding burstcannons.

"Aun'vre Toroun?" the commanding Fire Warrior asked.

"Please, if we are allies then allow me the courtesy of your true form."

The commander cocked her head and DarkBlade was witness to a most disturbing sight. The Fire Warriors became a shining mercurial color that quickly lost all features. With a faint hiss of escaping gas the bulky Fire Warrior armor shrank. The shapes became curvaceous and very human. By the time color faded back to reveal three Terran women, thirteen Tau Fire Warriors had their weapons trained on them.

"Peace," the Aun said, stepping in front of Lusha's attempt to shield him. "We have been expecting them. May I ask what your name is?"

"They call me Saint. Come, Aun, Shas'el, we have much to do."

DarkBlade stayed on the wall to help the reinforcements hold back any stragglers the air support might have missed. Medical scanners were set up around the landing platform. All the Fire Warriors and base personnel had to pass through them before boarding a transport. Some of the Tau, most wounded Pathfinders that had returned from the inner city, were quarantined on a Covenant Phantom. Quickly, far more quickly that DarkBlade would have thought possible; it was his squad's turn to board a shuttle. Each of them passed the scan and quickly settled exhaustedly into their assigned section. It had happened so fast that DarkBlade scarcely imagined it was real until they were in orbit. Someone piped an outside feed into the tactical monitor and DarkBlade removed his helmet for the first time in almost twenty hours. His eyes blurred for a moment before clearing.

"DarkBlade," the beautiful trooper, BrightDawn, made a face, "You really need a thorough grooming."

"Look," DarkBlade pointed toward the outside feed, his voice soft with wonder.

Around them the hundred-plus Tau studied the monitor with rapt attention. The shuttle was heading for a fleet of massive proportions. There were hundreds of capital ships, only half of which looked to be Hegemony, all clustered around a single Covenant City-Ship.

"Where are we going to go?" BrightDawn asked, worriedly.

"Wherever the Path takes us," DarkBlade answered, a grim smile coming to his thin lips, "I just hope we get to kill some Covenant along the way."

XXX

Tau Ethereal Vash'ti, formerly a proud son of Thanai Colony, hurried through the war-torn streets of an ancient Covenant City-Ship. Behind him nearly fifty Tau of every caste but fire, followed fearfully in his footsteps. He was trying to find them a safe place to hide but the slaughter seemed to follow them everywhere.

Over ten million Tau civilians had been gathered onto this abandoned city-ship by the Hegemony after the Tau Empire had fallen. They had toiled, mostly to produce weapons for the Hegemony machine, for at least a year. Many had died under the hellish conditions. Then the Coalition had begun to seed Hegemony worlds with plagues. A mere rumor whispered into the wrong ear had convinced the commander of the small fleet guarding them that the City-Ship had been infected by one of the many freighters that had docked. The fleet, split between Race and StarSpawn in retrofitted baseline Covenant war vessels, had attempted to destroy the city-ship.

The elder Aun, head of the city-ships Council, had somehow foreseen the turn of events. Brilliant Fio's, formerly of the 'la rank, had gotten the city-ships SlipSpace Drive functioning. Unfortunately the antiquated Drive was no match for the new models installed in the enemy ships. After a few small jumps they had been found and hundreds of boarding parties had breeched the hull. They had managed a SlipSpace jump before too much damage had been done. There were now an estimated five thousand soldiers inside the City-Ship and for the last few hours they had slaughtered nearly five times their number.

The Aun looked behind him at the fear-stricken face of a water caste Tau. There were no Fire Warriors in the City-Ship and for thousands of years no other caste had needed to learn the art of war.

_There really needs to be a discussion of just what the tau'va means to the people._

The Aun was leading his small group down a wide alley deeply shadowed by a pair of high-rise residential buildings. Five hundred meters above them the dome glittered with the patchwork diamonds that was the emergency shielding to hold the atmosphere in. Normally it would have gently reflected the lights from below but half the sectors were powerless.

An explosion high above them on their left caused the crowd to cower in fear. The Aun, having guided Fire Warriors in battle, calmly watched as the gout of flame disappeared into the structure. He was supposed to guide his small group to a sub-level bunker. Vash'ti doubted that he would succeed more with every passing moment.

The click of a Covenant Carbine's bolt being released drew his gaze back down to the alley floor. Standing in two ranks before him, the forward on their knees, was a collection of Race soldiers. The reptilian soldiers were deathly quiet in their modified Elite-armor. Someone pressed tightly to his back and the Aun half-turned to put an arm around a quivering air caste child. Behind them was another squad of Race.

There were no thoughts of surrender or mercy. Vash'ti had long ago seen the extent of Hegemony mercy. Several Tau in the group began to openly sob. He could not blame them for he often sobbed in private at the path his people now trod. A Race soldier, his armor a burnished copper-color, stepped to the front of the ranks before Vash'ti. The Ethereal fixed the soldier with his most implacable gaze. He would show the disgusting creature no fear. The bipedal reptile clicked and growled in its own language. He raised his scaly hand and rifles were aimed just a trifle steadier.

The heavy thrum of an Orca-class shuttles anti-gravity thrusters came as a total surprise to Vash'ti. A surgically precise rail-rifle shot took the Race squad leaders hand off at the wrist and that came as a complete shock to the soldier. Objects, spikes with flaring protrusions at the top, buried themselves in the ground before Vash'ti. A protective energy shield sprang to life before him to a height of three meters. Rockets, utterly silent in their approach, detonated spectacularly amidst the squad of Race. Once the flash and smoke cleared, all Vash'ti could see were scattered chunks of armor and reptilian flesh.

Shapes that Vash'ti had doubted he would ever see again began to fall from the heavens. Fire Warriors, moving with the feline grace that had crushed countless foes for eons, fanned out among the decimated Race squad. Vash'ti turned as his group began to cheer for their saviors. He could see that the group of Race soldiers behind them had been dealt with in similar fashion. The shuttle above them, obviously too large to land in the alley, flew away towards another group of refugees probably.

The group commander of the small force deactivated the shield with a small, handheld device, and reverently bowed to Vash'ti.

"Honored One," the commander said in a clipped tone that was reminiscent of the Ethereal's home planet. "My platoon has been assigned to escort your group to the nearest departure area.

"Departure area?" Vash'ti questioned, "Where would we go?"

The Fire Warrior looked at him in puzzlement, "But Aun, I thought all of you were enlightened as to the nature of our deliverance."

"It is… hard to believe."

The Fire Warrior nodded, "Wait until you meet our deliverers."

XXX

The Prophet, whose full title was a convoluted thing too unwieldy to think without causing catastrophic synapse failure, rushed down the corridors of Hegemony Command in a rage. He was in charge of oversight of three subjugated species in the Hegemony. One of those was the Tau and that was why the highest-ranked Ethereal was kept in the less sensitive areas of Command.

The Tau had proven a tenacious foe until they had realized the futility of resistance. Their abysmal performance and diligence in their duties across multiple fronts had caused them to be reduced to garrison and policing duties. The Tau citizenry, numbering less than one hundred million, had been put onto hive- and city-ships in several different galaxies to ensure the cooperation of the Fire Warriors.

Something had gone wrong though when the Coalition had begun their shocking counterattack. Communication problems among rear-echelon units were becoming common as a result of the Coalition's deep strikes. So when the Hegemony lost contact with millions of Fire Warrior, though it had been worrying since they numbered less than thirty million now, in garrisons across Hegemony space it had been thought a result of losing contact with entire planets. Then they had lost contact with a few fleets guarding Tau Refugee Fleets. Soon entire armies of Tau were disappearing while subjugating primitive planets for conscripts. Talk of the desertion of the Tau people was running rampant among the Prophets responsible for the subjugated races. Today was the day the Prophet-OverSeer was going to go see the spiritual fulcrum of the Tau people.

It was hard for the Prophet to entertain the idea that the Tau had the capacity to rebel. They had been cowed quite easily once they had chosen to surrender as a whole. Army units had been disbanded, fleets destroyed, and their people flung across the universe. Communications between them were strictly monitored. It just did not make sense. This Prophet hated things he did not understand. With that rage boiling inside, the Prophet had summoned several of the cruelest Brute torturers in the complex.

No one made a fool of him.

The Prophet knew something was wrong as soon as he came to the Tau's quarters. The squad of Brutes guarding the doors was gone.

"Commander," he waved his Brutes forward.

After several moments the Brute commander came back outside.

"You should see this," the Brute was so shaken he forgot to add an honorific.

The Prophet passed through the barracks where the Ethereal's Fire Warrior protectors had slept and into the private quarters. The smell of rot hit him as soon as the door whisked to the side. He covered his mouth with a delicate hand as his hover-throne glided into the room. It was an expansive suite but the presence of his half-squad of Brutes made it seem smaller.

The bodies stacked neatly against the far wall made it seem even smaller.

Each of the Brutes assigned to guard the Tau lay in various states of death. Some looked untouched except for the unnatural angle of their necks while some had gaping wounds in their torsos. All had a tiny, blinking blue light shoved into one of their eye sockets. It was a locator beacon each Tau had been implanted with when they had come to Hegemony Command.

"They've escaped!" the Prophet exclaimed unnecessarily as he began fumbling for his communication panel.

The lights snapped off before he could and high-pitched laughter began to play all over Hegemony Command.

It sounded disturbingly human.


	15. Big Guns

The Fleet Master of a small holding force, a scant fifty baseline Covenant vessels, was relatively young and inexperienced. He, as had many of his generation, had been put in command of a rear-echelon force assigned to safeguard a Halo artifact. While doing such was as close to paying direct homage to the ForeRunners as was possible, it did little to advance his career. Being a young Fleet Master he was strict in fleet discipline and procedure but had yet to gain the experience to trust his instincts.

When four Covenant Destroyers dropped out of SlipSpace barely four hundred kilometers from the patrolled perimeter, spitting distance even by interplanetary standards, it was a tad suspicious. The blistered patches on their streamlined frames were also cause for alarm. A priority message was quickly sent to the Fleet Master from a Brute with a nasty head wound. The Brute told an astonishing tale of a secret Coalition base launching a surprise attack. It was improbable but not impossible and the Fleet Master could only think of the prestige he would gain from destroying a Coalition base. After the proper codes were confirmed the Fleet Master hurriedly gave permission for the Destroyers to dock with the fleet's only Super Carrier. He was already contacting his Ship Masters to select which would go with him to take back this galaxy's Earth.

Outside, in the relatively crowded expanse of space around the Halo, the four Destroyers silently approached the Super Carrier. When they had come within ten kilometers the officers manning the Carrier's sensors noticed peculiar energy spikes coming from the lead ship. By the time they contacted the Ship Master the Destroyers were within five kilometers and had managed to approach from different vectors. The veteran Ship Master of the Super Carrier blamed it on his youthful superior's lust for glory.

All four Destroyers detonated in an actinic flash that completely blinded the entire fleet for several precious seconds even as it destroyed the Super Carrier.

* * *

This is what happened in those few seconds that the Fleet was blinded. 

Ten vessels, of a configuration unknown to the Covenant, dropped out of SlipSpace only two hundred kilometers from the leading edge of the Covenant Fleet. They were of varying sizes but had identical shapes. Deceptively slim needles complete with eyes that opened into the void. The vessels were dazzling metallic silver in color and they could have almost been mistaken for stars at the right angle. The largest vessel, at the rear of the formation, began to spill from its eye a horde of miniature stars. The majority were shaped like quad-pronged needles, while some were shaped like cigars with stubby, forward sweeping wings; and the rest like the barracuda for which they were named.

The small attacking force had dropped out of SlipSpace in three tiers with the largest at the highest plane. Each tier was separated by thirty kilometers to give them clear fields of fire. The middle tier, composed of four vessels over two-thirds a kilometer long, spat forth blistering lines of shells in multi-ton weight class from rail emplacements. These were not normal rail emplacements but modified rapid-fire Rail Guns. Each emplacement extruded four linear accelerators around a loading tower. The accelerators fired in a cyclic pattern, two reloading while others fired, at a rate of four rounds every five seconds. Each ship in the middle tier was equipped with two forward facing emplacements.

Before the Covenant Fleet was aware they were under attack, five Destroyers and a Cruiser were obliterated by the blazing trails of light.

The first tier, the ships no longer than half a kilometer long, streaked forward amidst a large cloud of glittering 'stars'. When they closed to within fifty kilometers of the Hegemony Fleet they opened fire with devastating volleys from Capital-Class Particle Cannons.

Then the battle was truly joined.

* * *

First Lieutenant Ui'Tyinus' hands shook slightly as his flight escorted _Philly Pride_ into battle. He was a Reaper pilot in the Tenth Reaper Squadron, Alpha Wing, Third Flight, Armada of Unity, First Carrier Group and this was his first live sortie. 

_Why so nervous? You're air caste, Kor, this is the moment your entire life has led towards._

The warm, masculine voice in his head was soothing to the Tau's nerves.

_I don't know why,_ he thought at the voice. _I'm ready._

The statement had come out as more of a question than he would have liked.

_You _are _ready,_ his A.I. that still had yet to choose a name laughed. _We're ready_.

The A.I., designed from Aerial Hunter-Killer specifications, had been very dubious about partnering with an organic. His matter-of-fact assessment of Tyinus' readiness steadied the pilot's hands. Tyinus fixed his gaze on his forward view port, a thick band of transparent alloy, and at the quickly growing Hegemony Fleet. The gently curved side of the Trinity Destroyer to port bristled with emplacements. Above him the Cruisers continued their long-range bombardment. Suddenly the lines of light left by rail-shot disappeared only to be replaced by a cloud of torpedoes. The weapons were five meters long and carried payloads that could obliterate medium-sized asteroids.

_Fifty-three?_ Tyinus' A.I. mused. _That's a bit excessive._

The Hegemony finally began to return fire and lance-like directed energy weapons stabbed into the torpedo barrage. Plasma torpedoes were launched and began tracking the Destroyers.

"This is Wing Commander. Get hot."

Tyinus closed his eyes as his A.I. brought his ship to combat readiness. A surge in the data-stream coming through the jack at the base of his skull expanded his awareness into the Reaper. When he opened his eyes there was no control board in front of him, no throttle, no control yoke, only wide-open space. There was no need for sensor read-outs because he knew, as he knew how many fingers he had without looking, everything there was to know about his Reaper. Tyinus knew that he was exactly seven hundred, thirty-nine point five-six meters away from the hull of _Philly Pride_. He knew that his dual-linked particle repeaters were ready to fire. Tyinus knew the instant the first torpedo detonated.

The detonations of the torpedoes washed space in radiation and debris that clouded Hegemony sensors for several seconds.

_Philly Pride_ and its escort were the first through.

Tyinus' field of view was taken up by a massive baseline Covenant Cruiser bearing down on _Philly Pride_. It utterly dwarfed the ISN Destroyer as the Seraph fighters dwarfed the slender Reapers.

_Size does not matter._ The thought came from one of the two sentient minds but it was irrelevant from which.

_Philly Pride_ put on a burst of speed to close the distance. It was a suicidal maneuver given the disparity in ship size and the Cruiser was happy to oblige.

"Tenth," the squadron leader, a grizzled veteran called Nail, opened up the squadron's comm.-net. "There's a bomber wing trying to make a run. We have been cleared to intercept. Divide into pairs. Take your targets as they come. On me. "

The orders were given in a clear, powerful voice that had Tyinus lining up with his Wing-Mate and diving away from the Destroyer at almost a ninety-degree angle. 10th Squadron streaked forward in a double-line formation with Wing-Team One at the fore. Tyinus' team was near the rear of the squadron but his sensors told him everything he needed to know.

The bombers escort, Seraph fighters, peeled away to intercept the 10th.

"Split," Ten-Lead commanded and his team slipped fifty meters to port.

Tyinus and his Wing-Mate, Oros, were separated by fifteen meters and the distance deviated barely a millimeter as they slipped to port. A pair of Seraphs selected them as their targets and rocketed toward them with plasma cannons blazing. Tyinus and Oros jinked port, starboard, high and low but always returned to their fifteen meter spread.

"I think a Number Five would do nicely," Oros said as the two sets of ships came within five kilometers of each other.

"Agreed," Tyinus returned.

The Seraph pilots, probably assuming they could obliterate the smaller Reapers in one pass, did not deviate from their course. Traveling at many times the speed of sound, the distance was closed in seconds. Tyinus and Oros nudged their noses sharply down as they reversed thrust. The resultant increase in gravities would have crushed their finely boned, two-meter tall frames if not for the Reapers inertial dampeners and the hydrostatic gel that filled their flight suits. Crackling lines of particle energy lashed out as the Reaper pilots stood their fighters on their tails to bring their noses in line with the Seraphs bellies. Shields flared into nothingness and the enemy fighters did not explode so much as tear apart under the stress of their own velocity.

Tyinus' shields still retained seventy percent integrity.

"Two for us," Oros said, her voice grimly triumphant.

It was the first kill for both of them.

_Bomber_, Tyinus' A.I. gently brought the bomber to his attention.

It was passing at its maximum velocity only six kilometers to port.

"Rockets," Tyinus opened the comm. channel with a thought.

"Agreed."

The Wing-Team swung their Reapers around and in-line with the target. There was no need for vocal confirmation of launch as each pilot was aware milliseconds _before_ the two rockets were spat from their tubes. These weapons were fire-and-forget but they were useful at long-range for two reasons. They were ejected at hypervelocity from their tubes, nowhere near as fast as a rail-round though, and their powerful thrusters gave another acceleration boost. Tyinus' rocket zipped through space at a fraction of the speed of light. Tyinus' rocket hit the bomber, obliterated its shield, and disintegrated half a meter of armor. Oros' rocket blasted it into a hundred tiny pieces.

The rest of the squadron had dealt with the remaining Seraphs and bombers without losing anyone.

"Second B-squad needs an escort. We have the honor. Line on me."

A waypoint marker, courtesy of Tyinus' A.I., appeared in the center of his visual field. Oros slid her Reaper behind him and the two oriented themselves towards the rest of the squadron. Ten-Lead was already moving towards the objective at two-thirds maximum speed. The other Wing-Teams were banking, slipping, and diving into formation. Tyinus accelerated his fighter towards the squadron at maximum thrust output. He and Oros were at the end this time but that just made it easier to line up with the others.

A hundred kilometers forward and to port the big guns were blasting away at each other. Tyinus magnified on the image of _Philly Pride_ slowing as it made a broadside pass on the Hegemony Destroyer. At that range there could be no mistaking sensor readings, indeed it was close enough for visual assessment. Tyinus felt a grim pleasure at the thought of an arrogant Hegemony commander staring in horror as spooled plasma torpedo's came undone as they passed through the seven hundred meter wide entropy shield surrounding _Philly Pride_. Meanwhile _Philly Pride_ was unleashing hell from its CC-Particle and Plasma Cannons. _Philly Pride_ fired its weapons randomly since it had to open relatively small holes in its entropy shields to do so. It was dazzling to watch the exchange of energies between the two vessels. Once _Philly Pride_ was past the stern it was evident who had won. The Hegemony Destroyer's shields were down and huge pieces of hull were open to the cold embrace of space. Another Hegemony Destroyer, broadside to the needle bow of _Philly Pride_, waited to make its mark on the Trinity Destroyer. A Cruiser fired a directed energy weapon; Plasma-Lance is what a fighter pilot had dubbed them, which passed through the entropy shield. The Plasma-Lance still lost a good deal of its destructive capability because _Philly Pride_'s hull was barely scorched.

Then _Philly Pride_ did something impossible and insane. Under full reverse thrust, at least Tyinus assumed so, the Trinity Destroyer stood up on its nose to present its belly to the Hegemony Destroyer it had passed. One rail-round was fired from the emplacements there. That round was a kiloton monster that effortlessly chewed its way deep into the enemy ship. Explosions began to tear the Hegemony vessel apart as _Philly Pride_ rolled to present its Rail-Cannons to the other Destroyer while its particle weapons softened the prey.

"Squadron of Covenant Interceptors vectoring in on our bombers. We've got the duty. Break off on mark by team."

The 10th roared past the Kraken's and their three-Barracuda escort. Tyinus brought his focus back to his immediate situation. The Interceptors were sleeker, faster and more maneuverable than Seraphs but also not as heavily armored.

"Mark."

10th Squadron cut their engines almost as one and broke from their formation coasting on inertia. The Interceptors were not altering their trajectory a jot.

"Wake up call."

The squadron, from whatever intercept vector they were facing, launched a simultaneous barrage of rockets. Several of the Interceptors were destroyed in a flash while the rest took last millisecond evasive action. The rockets detonated, per their programming, once they confirmed a miss.

Neither side cared at that point.

The next twelve seconds of Tyinus' life were a flashing jumble of images. Oros and he engaged in death-defying maneuvers to take down a particularly skilled pilot. Him almost being speared by a Reaper fired rocket and only a split-second warning from his A.I. saved him. The space, it was amazing how less than twenty ships dogfighting in a thirty kilometer area could do so, but the entire area was _filled_ with weapon emissions and actinic explosions.

When the last Interceptor was destroyed the 10th was still whole. Tyinus' shield, to his vast shock, had only been reduced by twenty percent. Half of that had been because of the near-miss.

"My apologies, brother," it was almost as if Nail had heard his thoughts.

"It happens, brother," Tyinus replied and that was the end of that.

Nail switched to the squad-wide channel, "Fall in. Standard escort."

The 10th waited for the bombers to catch up and fell into a square formation with Wing-One high above the bombers plane. The Barracudas flanked and led the squadron of Krakens. The rest of the journey was uneventful because the Cruiser that was the target was too concerned with _Philly Pride_ as the Trinity Destroyer tore a hole through the Fleet of its sister ships. The Cruiser's fighter escort was embroiled in a brutal dogfight with the rest of their wing. Tyinus could feel how many of his brothers and sisters were still fighting. They had already lost three. Dogfights anywhere near capital ships were always risky. Stray too close to any and there was always the chance of being obliterated by anti-fighter batteries.

"Hold position, Tenth. Barracudas will take them the rest of the way."

The Barracudas were nine meters of destructive force wrapped in a sleek package. There were no wings on the craft so all of their weapons were semi-interior. Two rocket pods adorned the sides while twin torpedo tubes gave it a knock-out punch for an unwary capital ship. Dual heavy particle cannons forward, flanking particle repeaters, and an aft particle repeater allowed dogfights when a Barracuda had a need.

The Krakens had been given their nickname after Command had seen how just one could utterly obliterate a capital ship. That was all Krakens were intended to be- ship killers. For that purpose the stubby wings were filled with a variety of high-yield missiles while four, dual-tube torpedo launchers ringed its midsection. Two bow-emplaced particle repeaters and an aft one gave the Krakens some anti-fighter capability but they were not designed for it.

The Krakens pulled ahead and fired one salvo of torpedoes at the Cruiser's stern. Particle detonations stripped away the shield and killed the thrusters. Only six torpedoes or so Tyinus' A.I. told him, were launched. Massive explosions, generated by fusion reactions, tore the ship to pieces in a light show that would have blinded Tyinus if he was actually looking with his eyes.

"We have another mission, Tenth. Gunships dropped in behind the moon and found two Covenant Cruisers and their fighter escort waiting. Since we already have a bomber squad we are being sent to assist."

"Are we it?" Ten-Four, a fidgety kor'ui named Es'kolte, asked nervously.

"No, we are just closer than the others."

The Krakens and Barracudas quickly formed up and the Reapers took their places. It was at least three hundred thousand kilometers to their destination. At maximum speed a Kraken could cover the distance in less than a minute. Thankfully their course put them in an arc that took them far around the frenetic capital ship battle. Flairs of light marked the deaths of capital ships and Tyinus sighed with relief that it was not a Trinity Destroyer.

"Contacts," Nail's voice was tight over the comm.

Tyinus' A.I. brought the sensors contacts to his attention. Six Hegemony Interceptors were escorting a ship of unknown configuration. It was heavily armed though and its profile was consistent with Yevetha design. The unknown enemy ship was three times the size of a Barracuda in every dimension.

"Teams Four and Five, break-off and engage. Foun had command. I am sending a Barracuda for back-up. For the Greater Good!"

Tyinus' signaled acknowledgement through his transponder and veered off after the Barracuda. Foun and his Wing-Mate, Lisau, formed up to port of the heavy fighter. The five Trinity Interstellar Navy vessels formed a deadly spearhead with the Barracuda at the fore. There was a faint sound in Tyinus' ears a second before the Barracuda fired a pair of meter long torpedoes. The fighters cut their speed by thirty percent and watched as a Plasma-Lance detonated them from five kilometers away. The torpedoes exploded in a shower of small, round fusion mines that were carried forward by their momentum. The Hegemony ships broke formation but two and the unknown ship were not fast enough. It only took several mines to deplete an Interceptor's shield. Then more mines were free to eat gaping holes wherever they landed.

The Yevetha ship was much larger but also a much bigger target. The Barracuda wasted no time in firing off a dazzling missile salvo at the enemy ship as it was engulfed in mini-fusion mines. In response the Yevetha ship launched a missile salvo that dwarfed the Barracuda's and got nearly instantaneous guidance locks on all of the Trinity fighters.

_Should take just a minute,_ Tyinus' A.I. said.

_They'll be here in ten seconds._ Tyinus was surprised at how composed he felt.

"Evasive," Foun snarled and the Barracuda promptly dove away.

At least half the missiles followed the heavy fighter, seemingly more concerned with the slower moving target, but that still left two dozen locked onto the Reapers. The two Wing-Teams split to port and starboard. Now the missiles had to choose their targets and that took an entire nanosecond that allowed the Reapers to gain distance. Tyinus could feel the missiles, six of them, rapidly closing on his tail. He released small spherical, decoys that sent out a variety of signals designed to mimic his Reaper. Only four of the missiles took the bait, detonating in starbursts of plasma, while the remaining two resolutely continued pursuit.

Two thousand meters.

Nine hundred meters.

_Remote-hack going live._

There was a harsh screeching in Tyinus' mind and two hundred meters behind him the missiles detonated.

_Cutting it a little close?_ Tyinus asked dryly.

_It-_

Before the A.I. could finish, Tyinus cut his thrust, rotated the Reaper's nose in a precise sixty degree spin, and fired particle streams from all four prongs. The Interceptor, traveling at speeds in excess of five hundred meters per second, could not deviate in time. Each particle stream converged at nearly the same spot beneath what could have been the cockpit. The blast ripped through the shields and the cockpit disappeared in a spray of debris. Seconds later the ship exploded spectacularly but Tyinus had already moved on.

"Two on my tail!" Oros' voice was tight with strain.

"Number Three, just like the simulations," Tyinus replied calmly.

"Affirmative," Oros sounded just slightly calmer.

Oros pulled her Reaper up into a tight loop with the Interceptors only three hundred meters behind her. The Interceptors had been firing their plasma cannons wildly after they discovered their missiles refused to lock on. Now they stopped firing as they concentrated on following Oros' maneuver. A millisecond after hitting the bottom of her arc, Oros cut thrust, flipped her Reaper nose-over-tail, and fired a pair of rockets just as the Interceptors were correcting their vectors. The lead Interceptor disappeared in an expanding ball of plasma while the other deftly avoided his death with a lightning fast barrel-roll. Unfortunately that put him directly in Tyinus' path and the kor pilot fired his particle weapons without mercy.

"This is Barracuda One, requesting immediate assistance."

"That's you, T-Four," Foun ordered and Tyinus was instantly aware Wing-Team Five was still dancing with their trio of Hegemony fighters.

Tyinus and Oros formed up side-by-side and raced towards the Barracuda. Tyinus magnified and was astonished to see how much damage the enemy craft had taken. At least four meters of alloy-spine was showing like the chewed bones of a terrestrial animal. Huge rents in its portside were sporadically venting atmosphere. To Tyinus' utter disbelief the Hegemony ship was still fighting and the Barracuda had taken moderate damage. It looked as though all of its torpedo tubes had been partially slagged. Now it was trading particle gun fire for plasma fire.

Tyinus and Oros were only two hundred meters away, already reversing thrust for an attack run, when the Barracuda darted away.

_The reactor has gone supercritical. I suggest you turn around fast!_

The Wing-Team flipped their ships and fired their thrusters at maximum output. Stopping their momentum when traveling at attack run speed was not instantaneous. They were still closing on the ship when the bulging of its hull was the first precursor to a devastating explosion.

"Thrust, Oros. We need _thrust_."

_Thrust_, he thought with all his might and then something unexpected happened.

The thruster assembly of all Trinity combat vessels was designed to be virtually invisible. Tyinus and Oros' assembly cover, a relatively small outer casing, broke off as their thoughts obsessively turned to thrust. The stinger shaped primary thruster began to glow blue-white with an intensity the designers had never envisioned.

In a burst of brilliant blue-white light the two Reapers accelerated far past what was believed to be their maximum speed in less than a second.

It was then that the Hegemony ship exploded and the shockwave expanded almost as fast as the Reapers were accelerating.

_That's impossible._ Tyinus' A.I. actually sounded astonished.

The massive front of destructive heat and radiation raced at the two pilots with a hungry malevolence they could almost feel. After nearly a five hundred kilometer chase the shockwave began to dissipate. Shortly after the ISN communication lines were full of questions.

Tyinus was simply happy to be alive.

* * *

Corporal Cage ducked as another plasma mortar impacted ten meters in front of his platoon's position. This… Halo was awe-inspiring in its grandeur, Cage had only been able to gape in amazement when the shuttle had taken them to the surface, but now he was wishing the builders had stuck to natural landscapes. Cage's entire cadre, along with several others, had been ordered to reinforce the Terminators that had taken control of the command center. Intel had not been so kind as to tell them the entire canyon floor belonged to the Hegemony. 

The cadres had fought through at least a regiment of Covenant Corps. before being brought to a standstill by the hardpoints the Hegemony had set up. Ten of those hardpoints were centered on the newest Wraith tank design the Hegemony had come up with. Cage's left arm still stung from a near miss of a mortar round even though a medic had regenerated his skin and tissue. There were Shade emplacements, as well as rocket batteries, all along the valley floor and walls. The armored cavalry the force had attached would be mince-meat in the wide-open approach that was the fastest route to the cavernous main doors. A series of bridges spanned the canyon but they too were crawling with AA-guns and Hegemony soldiers.

It was a killing ground out there.

Cage had been close when the acting commander, O'Styx, had called for an aerial strike. Naval Command had denied it and told him to wait for reinforcements. The Fire Warrior might have cursed, his body language had _not_ been happy, but he had ordered a squad to set up a Displacement Zone.

It was a very big Displacement Zone.

So the cadres had waited, what passed for night had fallen, and then whispers began that the Special Forces had arrived.

"What the hell are they going to do?" Cage mumbled as he chewed on a ration bar.

"Kill everything," a cold voice answered from the shadows.

Cage looked up, ration bar in his mouth, at a shape blacker than the darkness. Then light, a hellish crimson light in the shape of barbaric tattoos, flared briefly before the shadow moved towards the killing ground.

Dozens more followed.

The sky lit up with weapons fire and Cage's gun-team looked up in awe. Crisis BattleSuits led darting squads into battle. The BattleSuits, the largest no more than four meters in height, were everywhere laying waste to everything Hegemony in sight. The Special Forces were no different for every hardpoint they passed disappeared in fiery torment seconds later.

Six minutes and thirty seconds later, Cage was sure no one in his platoon had breathed once; the canyon floor belonged to the ISMC.

Still no one moved as the BattleSuits and Special Forces squads moved to the interior of the base.

Several minutes later a faint keeping noise could be heard coming from the open doors. Then a flood of Hegemony soldiers; they were a mixture of Jackals, Grunts, and even a small number of Elites, Brutes, and Hunters, raced out into the killing ground. By this time Cage and his repeater were part of a softpoint twenty meters from the entrance. It was deeply unsettling that the soldiers would run such a terribly gauntlet rather than face the ISMC forces that lay inside.

"Mont'au," a Tau whispered near him just as they opened fire.

Cage's computer translated it as 'The Terror' and Cage couldn't agree more.


	16. Havok

The planet was a typical, lifeless rock but was remarkable for two reasons. The first was the fact that it had a breathable atmosphere despite the absence of oxygen-producing organisms. The second reason was far more urgent to the Trinity Interstellar Naval Fleet that had set up a blockade around it.

A small Covenant strike force had landed only two days prior to the Hegemony losing control of their Halo.

The Hegemony strike force had landed a sizeable force on the ground. All three warships had been of an advanced design that was unknown to Trinity Intelligence. The vessels had managed to destroy an ISN Destroyer and severely damage several more before being disabled. Pathfinder boarding parties, reinforced by Special Forces, had secured the Hegemony vessels for study and reverse-engineering. An entire Ten-Cadre of Marines had been dropped planetside to capture or eliminate the Hegemony leadership. For two days the Hegemony forces, numbering between company and battalion strength, had staged a fighting withdrawal down a series of tunnels and canyons. They had made a stand at the entrance to a massive cavern nearly half a mile into the planet's crust. Eventually, the Marines had crushed all resistance but the Prophet that they believed led the strike force had fled deeper into the planet.

The Hegemony called the planet Havok and General Conner could not agree more.

Conner rubbed the bridge of his nose as he stood gazing out a viewport in the captain's ready room. It showed him an impressive view of the obsidian, craggy, barren surface of the world. Behind him sat General Perry, his injuries fully healed and appendages regenerated, and General O'Kais'. The two were on opposite sides of a briefing table and both stared at a holo-image of a pair of massive stone doors. It still unsettled the General to see bulkheads the polished silver hue that SkyNet favored.

"How many Special Forces squads infiltrated the interior?" Conner asked, turning back to his subordinates.

"Four, sir," Perry answered, his tone more grim that usual.

"How many survivors were there?"

"Three."

"We eliminated the exterior guards and opened the doors," O'Kais' took up the thread of conversation. "I ordered three cadres in and only four Marines made it back out."

"We have recordings. We'll play the ones that best illustrate the situation," Perry said and with the push of a button a holographic window opened to replace the doors.

It looked like the feed from a Marine's HUD. The Marine's squad was making its way down a tight corridor when the space opened wide into a roughly circular room with walls that rose up seemingly without end. The walls were covered in a substance that resembled resin. Conner wondered what it was but apparently the squad leader knew. She ordered everyone to retreat very carefully just before a hole opened in the material beneath her feet. A pair of long, clawed hands preceded a banana-shaped head and deceptively slender shoulders. The squad leader managed one bark of alarm before two solid smacks of a piston-like tongue speared a gaping wound in her chest. A single rail-shot speared a hole through the creature's skull before it could think of dragging the sergeant into the hole. Unfortunately a thin stream of blood splashed onto her armor and began eating away another hole centimeters beneath the first one. The squad's medic, flanked by T-850's, rushed to apply neutralizing agent while the gun-team leader called in an emergency situation report. The T-850's hoisted a stretcher between them and the squad began hustling their way back to a hardpoint the cadre-commander had set up.

The Tau whose eyes they were riding was in the middle of the squad. Suddenly the Marine on his left let out a startled, liquid cry of alarm. The Marine turned to see his brother Fire Warrior with a spear-tipped, prehensile tail sticking out of his chest. With effortless strength the tail flung the Marine's limp body into the Terminators bearing the injured sergeant. The next thirty seconds was a jumble of confusing images viewed through the colorless world of light amplification. The squad formed themselves into clusters by fire- and gun-team. They were prevented from using explosives by the tight confines of the tunnel. Conner cursed inwardly as, all too soon, their Marine was alone and running for the hardpoint.

"XenoMorphs," Conner grunted, "Is that what happened to the Special Forces?"

"No, sir." Perry looked as though he wanted to spit. "That was something worse."

The holo-image changed to the perspective of a Special Forces operator. The difference in the HUD was subtle but Conner's discerning eye could spot them. It looked as though the squad was ghosting their way down a long promenade. Conner couldn't be sure but he thought that it looked as though towering statues lined the path. Then the soldiers came to a gruesome discovery. Bodies, dozens of them, were strung midway up the body of a statue. They were skinless, but their muscles were dry and leathery almost as though the corpses had been preserved. What made the sight even more frightening was what the corpses had been in life.

Yaujta.

"What could do that?" Conner murmured, and was not surprised when O'Kais' delivered more disturbing news.

"Out best estimate has the body count at two hundred plus."

The squad leader barked for the squad to keep moving. Soon the squad had linked up with two others outside of a relatively narrow entrance to the next room. The soldier they were riding switched his carbine to particle cannon mode. Seconds later the squads streamed aggressively into the room along both walls. It was an enormous space with a domed ceiling. A partial wall blocked off the far end and situated in the middle of it was a massive, metallic throne with luxurious looking padding. Flanking the throne was a pair of robed figures with cloaks shrouding their features. Standing a few meters to the right was a Prophet shielded by four Hegemony Paladins. On the throne sat a bare-chest girl who looked no more than sixteen Terran-standard. Bizarre symbols looked as though they had long ago been _cut_ into her breasts. Long, shining red-gold hair covered her shoulders and arms. Her face was the picture of delicate feminine beauty.

The girl seemed entirely out of place in the forbidding environment until you noticed her shining yellow eyes.

"Welcome," the girl said in a honeyed voice.

Every single Marine fired their weapon of choice. The throne disappeared amongst rocket detonations and energy weapon glare. After nearly fifteen seconds the order was given to cease fire. Before the smoke had settled a peculiar hum began to reverberate through the chamber. The pair of cloaked figures strode through the cloud of debris with scarlet beams held casually at their hips.

The Marine they were watching from tossed a boom-stick at them and the squad leader roared for them to scatter. The boom-stick suddenly changed direction as though it were a boomerang. There was an image of the explosive device veering towards the Marine and then a flash of white washed the world away.

"Dark Jedi?" Conner asked, uncertainly.

"Worse, sir," Perry said, "We think the girl's a Sith Lord. Those designs on her chest are pretty similar to Sith symbols but none match what little we have on file from the Hegemony database."

"Why would they come here though?"

"We believe for this," O'Kais' said and the holo-image changed to a wire-frame of the planet's interior. The chamber was lit in bright yellow.

"These bands of red are XenoMorph hives and the blue are territories of a life form almost as deadly."

The bands of red and blue formed a kilometer-wide perimeter that effectively capped the throne room.

"This is what the throne's sitting on."

The image scaled back to the sharp, angular designs of a warship of massive proportions embedded in the very bedrock of the planet.

"We believe it's an intact Forerunner, or the nearest you'll get to it, warship."

Conner frowned and rubbed his nose again.

"I think it's time we got the Triad out here."

Perry and O'Kais shared a look.

"There may be a problem, sir."

* * *

One big problem that Boomer had never considered when they asked him to be a super soldier was an inability to get drunk. He had requested a separate bunk immediately after the debriefing for his last mission. To his surprise his request had been approved immediately and Boomer was set up in a modest-sized room with a fully stocked refrigerator. A week had passed and so did several training exercises that Boomer had royally screwed up. After a second week the shrinks had started arriving. There had only been four of them, Boomer had wondered if Command had gotten all the shrinks in North America and put them to work in the BattleDome, but all of them had practically run screaming after only a few minutes alone with him. One, who had asked a particularly annoying question, had suddenly developed a nosebleed that needed medical treatment to stop. So at the beginning of the third week Boomer had requested a case of brandy. Within a day he had his case and had been well on his way to getting rip-roaring drunk.

_Didn't quite work out like I planned_, Boomer thought miserably.

Boomer had not eaten in three days, nor had he taken even a sip of water, and the amount of alcohol he had imbibed should have poisoned him nearly to death. Despite all of that he was still, conscious, alert, and depressingly sober. He didn't even feel hungry, thirsty, or even much weaker. Whatever they had done to him was either truly wonderful or horrifyingly terrible. He hadn't decided yet.

The door to his room, pigsty really, opened and an Ethereal walked in. The glare from the hallway lights cast Boomer's room in sharp relief. There was only a large bed and a tiny computer terminal for furniture. On the floor were at least forty empty bottles and two equally empty crates sat beside the door.

"Illuminate, soft," the Aun said as he entered the room.

The light-crystals affixed to each corner of the room slowly came to life and bathed the room in a soft, golden glow. It was then that Boomer recognized who had come to pay him a visit. He immediately shot to his feet and stood at attention.

"Apologies, Aun'o… I- no one told me you were coming, sir."

Aun'o Gras'ur merely smiled and began to clear a space on the floor with his hoof-claws.

"Would you meditate with me, Boomer?" The request had the tone of an order and it was not lost on Boomer.

"Of course, Aun."

Boomer knelt on both knees on one side of the space that the Aun had cleared. O'Gras'ur knelt in the same manner.

"Now, breathe, Boomer. Breathe deep."

Boomer looked into the Ethereal's deep-set eyes and took a deep breath.

* * *

Gras'ur studied the young human in front of him with not a little awe. As soon as he had entered the room the psychic pressure from Boomer had made the Ethereal want to press his hands to his auditory canals. Instead he had merely raised his mental shields and the pressure had gone.

_No wonder the humans went into hysterics. I doubt any Ethereal on Terra could project psychic waves so powerful and we have done nothing but hone our latent psychic powers._

The Council of Auns had decided to send Gras'ur because he was the most adept using the new powers the caste found itself wielding for the Greater Good. Gras'ur lowered his shields enough to send mental probes deep into Boomer's mind. He met instant resistance that caused him to snap his eyes closed. At first there was darkness but then hollow shapes began to resolve themselves to him. Boomer kneeling before Gras'ur was a strong bluish-white aura while the furnishings were barely visible. Then a wave of psychic pressure pulsed from Boomer's solid blue-white skull in malevolent shades of red. Where it touched the Aun the wave simply dissipated but when it touched the walls it broke into dozens of smaller shockwaves. Then another wave would pulse to life before the last echoes had faded. Gras'ur had no doubt that, with a little training, Boomer would be able to push his mental projections past any physical obstacle.

The Aun focused his thoughts into a javelin of psychic force and waited patiently for the gap between waves. When it came he literally struck with the speed of thought. He was surprised that Boomer had little in the way of mental defenses against such probes before he remembered that the human lacked even his limited education in such matters. Boomer's mind was a black void with startlingly bright constellations floating in it. Each represented a different aspect of Boomer's physical brain. The individual brightness of a constellation signified what level of use Boomer gave it. Gras'ur had done this with a number of normal humans and he thought he knew the human mind well enough.

Boomer's brain was like a fiercely burning, freshly born universe compared to the others.

All the systems that Gras'ur was familiar with were shining much more brightly than they should have been, but the sheer number of unfamiliar clusters amazed the Aun. Normally the psychic currents between the clusters were relatively calm but Boomer's were raging torrents that Gras'ur had to actively fight. Some of the strange clusters were cut off completely and dimly glowed at that. This phenomenon he had seen before within his own caste as the different Auns awakened to their powers. Boomer seemed to have just as many as a Tau Ethereal.

_What _have_ we created?_ Gras'ur thought with a metaphysical shiver.

Gras'ur focused on the task at hand and let the currents take him on a tour of Boomer's mind. Sooner than he expected he came to the tight-knit clusters that were Boomer's memories and emotions. Nasty storms crackled their way around the whirling caldrons of sparkling light. Those would be the fears and phobias that had developed over the course of Boomer's life. This was where the pressure was emanating from. Thankfully, the psychic waves crackled outwards instead of in where they could have killed the human. Without preamble Gras'ur dived into the maelstrom.

Suddenly he was small, full of terror, and being carried by a panting human female. The sounds of pursuit were close, too close, and then Gras'ur was tumbling across hard topsoil. They were in an old-growth forest so there was little undergrowth. Gras'ur stood and began sobbing hysterically as five men beat and kicked his mother.

"Mama!" He screamed and ran to her as fast as he could.

One of the men turned and viciously backhanded the small child. Gras'ur's vision blurred along with the child's and when it cleared he found that the boy was bound and gagged. His mother was in the same situation less than four meters away. Tears flowed down her beautiful, dirt-crusted face as she shook her head as if willing him to turn away. Then she began to sob as a man leaped onto her. Gras'ur felt the confusion of the child-Boomer as to what the men were doing to make his mother cry but the Ethereal knew and was sickened. The five men each took their pleasure from Boomer's mother then, to Gras'ur's horror, the leader put an archaic revolver to the woman's temple and pulled the trigger. Boomer howled wordlessly and struggled futilely in his bonds.

The air filled with plasma and the laughter of the men turned to a single, keening wail. A Terminator, an older model that now existed only in historical archives, stepped into view. It was blocky and mechanically precise but definitely one of SkyNet's early attempts at mimicking human form. Several more followed the first, though the lead Terminator did not seem to be in command, and stopped in front of the man who had miraculously survived the hail of plasma. The closest Terminator raised a foot, placed it on the man's head to press it against the ground, and began to exert irresistible force. The man's wail turned to screams of pure terror that made Boomer grin viciously behind his gag. There was a loud crack, the man's lower body began to spasm and void, and then there was silence. The Terminators turned to Boomer and raised their weapons. Boomer was not frightened, he had moved passed that some time ago, but awe filled him in plenty. Even at so young an age he envied the power of the machines. Abruptly the Terminators turned and marched away.

Boomer turned to his mother and began sobbing himself to sleep.

When the child awoke he was in a small, smelly room with a small, smelly man. Gras'ur could only watch in shock as the events of Boomer's life literally flashed in small snippets before his eyes. Boomer's formative years consisted of almost daily beatings and watching the trio of older women that took care of him catch wasting diseases from their clientele. Then the surrogate mothers were replaced by cold-eyed younger women that had spent much of their lives in the new world and made Boomer's beatings daily. Even night up until the night he was taken in by TechCom, Boomer went to bed praying for God to make him a machine. The images move on to TechCom training, Boomer's obsessive aptitude for combat and subsequent first tour. The entire time Boomer trained to kill, even when he began racking up an impressive amount of confirmed Machine kills, he never lost the deep buried yearning to have the power of a machine. Then he had met Yuri and the surge of euphoric love nearly caused Gras'ur to lose his psychic grip. On these brief moments Boomer seemed to linger the longest. Then everything froze on the image of Yuri, oddly naked, impaled through the sternum by a Covenant Paladin. In Boomer's mind he had become a Terminator except his power source had been his all-encompassing hatred of the things that had taken his Yuri. The following weeks passed in a flash and Boomer was peering at himself in a mirror.

What stared back at him was the gleaming façade of a Terminator.

The emotions that boiled over were potent. Survivor's guilt, shame, envy, disgust, elation, and underneath it all was a simmering anger that only needed a focus to be unleashed. Gras'uir withdrew back into the void to consider what to do. There were too many memories tangled up with Boomer's emotional health to just erase them without damaging Boomer's psyche. There was only one thing to do given the time constraints. The Ethereal slipped between the clusters and pushed them apart. It took a good deal of strength but finally the distance was enough. The phobia-storms had lessened in intensity and the psychic pressure waves had almost completely stopped. Upon closer inspection the cluster that was Boomer's emotional response was still receiving bursts of intense energy from one path in particular.

Gras'ur flowed into the current and let it take him into the relatively quiet subconscious. Here the currents were not so strong and the clusters not as bright.

_Well, most of the time._ Gras'ur amended as a powerful eddy spun him about momentarily.

The Aun found the problem and raised a metaphysical eyebrow. It was the cluster responsible for a number of non-physical sexual function, specifically sexual desire and fantasy. Gras'ur gave a mental sigh and entered the cluster. Boomer was in the Triad's bunkroom dressed in a very small towel. He was sitting on the edge of the bunk when Khory walked in. The Terminator was wearing a floral-patterned skirt of all things and nothing else. Without hesitation she straddled Boomer and kissed him hard. Boomer pushed her off, though it was more like she let him, and stared at Khory in bewilderment.

"What are you doing!" Boomer shouted incredulously.

"If I'm to act human I need to be able to function sexually." Khory seductively crawled on the bunk beside Boomer on all fours. "Teach me?"

Boomer was stunned for at least five seconds before standing with a grin. Gras'ur suddenly found himself standing beside the bunks, watching the two engage in a wide variety of sexual activities. Some of which, though Gras'ur had never actually witnessed humans mating, the Aun thought were physically impossible for normal humans. Then the scene paused on just such an activity.

"I want to screw a machine. How sick is that?"

Boomer's voice beside him was enough shock to catapult Gras'ur back into the void. Boomer followed him, his ghostly image wearing TechCom fatigues, and with a frown etched deep into his face.

"I thought this place was a dream. It's not?"

"It is not," Gras'ur told him after recovering himself. "It is your… mind for lack of a better word."

"This, and the memories, are why I drink when I get stressed. I guess." Even Boomer's metaphysical self seemed uncomfortable talking about it. "Can you fix this, too?'

"I can but it will take much of your sexual desire and function away. Only you can truly fix this problem."

"How?"

"By accepting what and who you are."

"Boomer's frown deepened, "Do you know?"

The Aun barked laughter, "Only you know, Boomer. You have the power to do everything I just did. You can reverse it anytime you wish with teaching. When you return from your mission we can work on a more natural resolution."

"Mission?"

"Yes," the Aun smiled, "You are an important piece of the Triad. It's heart if you will. Would you like to share my knowledge so you are better able to fill that role?"

The answered rumbled through the void like unseen thunder.

"Yes."

* * *

Khory-012 looked towards the door from her placed beside Templar's bunk. They had received orders to ready themselves for immediate deployment in thirty minutes. It would take them far less time. Khory had noticed that Tau seemed sticklers for rules. Templar stood from his meditations and shared a surprised glance with Khory. The third member of their Triad was strutting into the room as though the last weeks had never occurred. His first words dismissed them of that notion.

"I'm sorry, guys. Don't make faces, Khory."

Khory did not believe she had been doing any such thing but a system log check revealed she actually had made a face. Other T-X units had reported autonomous physical reactions incited by their emotional emulators but it was the first time is had happened to Khory. She burned with eagerness to report her discovery to SkyNet but she wanted to give Boomer her full attention.

"I don't know what I can do to make it up to you, Khory, but I'll find a way."

Khory cocked her head, "Shit happens."

That was a suitable answer, she deduced from Boomer's sudden grin and Templar's chuckle.

"Mistakes happen, but there was little harm done." Templar added more eloquently.

"Triad once more?" Boomer extended his hand to Templar.

Templar reached to take Boomer's hand and was suddenly swept up into a fierce hug. The Fire Warrior must have weighed over a hundred and fifty kilograms but Boomer lifted him with ease. It was easy to forget, since Boomer was the weakest, that the modified human was far stronger than he looked. After a moment Boomer set Templar down with an arm around the shoulders and fixed Khory with a level gaze. Then he smiled and held out an arm in invitation. Before Khory could move more than a step she was gently lifted into the air and floating into Boomer's waiting embrace. No longer did her emulator tell her what to feel. The device simply broadcast the appropriate signals. The surprise she could understand, along with the feelings of trust and camaraderie, but there were two new things that puzzled her greatly. One was a combination of many emotions that combined into a greater whole. The other was singularly powerful and prompted subconscious hardware to produce vivid images of her and Boomer in a plethora of sexual situations. Khory's processor worked overtime for all of one second.

Then the Machine simply enjoyed it.

* * *

Three days later the Triad was on the surface of a hostile enemy world staring down a kilometer deep shaft in obsidian-colored topsoil. Around the opened was a modest-sized ISMC encampment built to provide support for their mission. It had already fended off four XenoMorph assaults, one from inside the hole, but had held the dual perimeters each time. The hole was at the center of a shallow crater and was lined with heavy-duty particle repeater emplacement that shone brightly against their dark backdrop.

General Perry's face appearing in a pop-up on Templar's HUD.

"We have to step up the timetable. No feints; no distractions; no backup. There was an energy spike near the planet's core. Intel thinks they may be close to releasing the last seal. Mission directives hold steady. For the Greater Good!"

"For the Greater Good," the Triad intoned as one.

Seconds later, guided plasma mortars arched into the air around the crater and plunged into the shaft faster than gravity would have allowed. They would detonate at fixed intervals and hopefully clear the shaft of waiting Xeno hordes. When the last mortar was in, Khory dove headfirst into the darkness, followed by Boomer and then Templar. Templar tucked his arms and legs in to be as stream-lined as possible. He knew the others were following suit as well, but Khory's heavier armor would let her gain some distance. The walls they shot past had the smooth, glassy look of plasma scoring. Templar doubted anything could have survived it.

A single Warrior, one limb a melted ruin, launched itself at Templar after bursting from its crusted over hiding place. Templar tumbled in the air with feline grace, deftly avoided the deadly jaws, grasping claws, and stabbing tail, before putting a plasma bolt into its abdomen. Just because he doubted something was possible did not mean he was unprepared. The strobe effect of plasma fire and shuddering booms of mini-rocket detonation told Templar that the rest of the Triad had reached bottom. He magnified on their images and approved of what he saw. Khory was firing her shoulder-mounted plasma rockets down the tunnel they needed to take while Boomer covered another entrance that hadn't been in the recording.

_These bugs work fast_, Templar thought as he flipped to present his boots to the floor.

Templar decelerated hard but landed as soft as a feather. He fired his carbine into the writhing mass of Xeno's that were attempting to strike Khory's back.

"Khory, advance at Walk Three. One meter spread. Boomer, Boom-Sticks."

Templar reached behind him and retrieved a Boom-Stick without ceasing fire. He and Boomer were using electrical plasma so there was little chance of their weapons overheating. Together they did the deft twist of the wrist that allowed a Marine to activate a Boom-Stick with one hand and threw them down the tunnel. Khory stepped a meter ahead of them and Boomer a meter to Templar's right. Then Khory was off, her rocket-pods finally going dry, with her two comrade's right behind her. The three moved, glided on their anti-gravity thrusters really, at roughly thirty kilometers per hour. Khory's shoulder-mounted particle repeaters, apparently she had changed the weapons on her shoulder mounts, began speaking into the silence the pods had left. She did so well cleaning their path that neither Templar nor Boomer ever had to fight off ambushers she missed. There were a few times reinforcements ran along ceiling and wall but the two handled them quickly enough.

It often filled Templar with a sense of wonder, the way his Triad worked.

Quickly, the mission clock was at five minutes plus, the Triad was ghosting its way past the skinned Yautja.

"They know we're here," Boomer said tonelessly, "There is no use trying to sneak in."

"What should we do?" Templar asked even though nominally the leader he never turned down advice.

"Follow my lead. I'll see if we can thin their numbers."

Templar felt a peculiar tingling sensation for a moment but dismissed it as Boomer took the lead into the room. The décor was almost identical to the recordings and so were the faces with some exceptions. Bodies in Special Forces armor that were staked to the throne-wall was something new. There were only three Covenant Paladins now, instead of four and a Prophet. The woman and her dark-robed apprentices surely looked exactly the same.

"More guests," the young woman smiled alluringly, "And quite powerful, I think. One strong in the Force… the other something new I think. Darth Reign, are these those Jedi-Spartans you warned me of?"

"No, Lady," one of the figures said from the depths of their cowl. "The Coalition would not have spared them for this fly-speck galaxy. These are pale imitations I suspect."

"Come along peacefully and no one has to die," Boomer said calmly.

There were a few moments of shocked silence before the Sith Lord giggled prettily.

"Let's see how pale they are. Paladins!"

Without a word the Paladins stalked toward them with snarls etched into their predatory mouths. When they were within five meters the Triad moved like a precise machine. Khory fired a continuous stream of particle energy from her shoulder-mount while stepping to the right. When she passed Boomer he fired several HE mini-rockets at the Paladins' feet. The Paladins jumped to avoid the rocket detonations, blocking Khory's particle fire with their staffs, and putting themselves into perfect position for Templar. The Fire Warrior put a rail-round through two of the Paladins' brains but the third somehow got its shield up to block. The force of the round practically halted the Paladin's momentum and drew a pained grunt as he landed four meters away.

"Not so pale as you think, Reign."

As if that were a signal the Sith Apprentices became blurs racing towards the Triad. Templar fired once, missed, and barely saves his hands from being sliced off by a crimson lightsaber. There was little else to do but draw his Dueling Blade, activate the particle sheathe, and parry a thrust that would have skewered him. The other Sith had gone for Boomer while the remaining Paladin had engaged Khory.

Then the time for thought was over and all Templar knew was his shining blade. The Sith moved with a dancer's grace around Templar, who felt clumsy for the first time in his life, flipping and whirling as he fought holes in Templar's defenses. Holes he did find in plenty for there were no trained swordsmen on Terra and a Fire Warrior's Dueling Blade had long been a ceremonial weapon carried into battle. The Sith seemed to be everywhere with the crimson lightsaber. Sometime during their circling fight the Sith's cowl had fallen to reveal a beautiful, green-skinned humanoid female. His computer immediately identified the species as Twi'lek. That mattered little to his as another glancing blow took away his secondary shield.

It was only after several more blows, which Templar knew should have been fatal, but merely sheered off his artificial musculature, that he realized he was being toyed with. The Sith could have killed him anytime she wanted to. From the terrible grin that twisted her face the Twi'lek was enjoying it. Despair so deep clouded Templar's mind that it took all he had to parry the next blow.

"_Let go, Templar. Let go of desire. Embrace death and become free."_

The voice in his head, warm and feminine, was unexpected but so was her wisdom. But it could not be as easy as she said, could it? It took several long seconds for Templar to center himself with Tau litanies but he managed to after taking several more humiliating blows.

Templar closed his eyes and held his blade before his faceplate.

"Finish him, Reign, then give the others a hand. This bore's me."

There was a moment when time seemed to stop, the universe inhaled deeply, and Templar's arm moved of its own accord to brutally slap away his opponent's lazy thrust. Templar opened his eyes to see the Sith stumble backwards, shaking her hand and glaring hatefully. He could see now but everything was different.

Everything.

The apprentice removed her robe to reveal a skintight, dark green jumpsuit. She gestured, a fist-pumping motion at Templar, and her eyes narrowed as nothing happened. Then she came at Templar but he felt clumsy no more. Darth Reign tried for a lightning-quick lunge thrust that Templar nimbly spun around. He brought his blade down in mid-spin and Reign barely rotated on her extended knee for a parry. The Sith rolled forward with the parry, onto her feet, turned and had to leap back to avoid an upward thrust to her sternum.

That leap carried Reign five meters into the air.

Templar jumped after her and the two traded blows as he passed her on his way up. The body of a Marine darted from the wall toward him but Templar spun around and snap-kicked the body towards Reign. With a contemptuous gesture she sent the body careening into the recesses of the promenade. Templar landed and the two combatants regarded each other coolly. Templar felt calm and sure of the outcome. He had never felt such surety in his life. When Reign came at him with a spinning flourish that became an overhead strike that turned into a short thrust, he knew exactly what to do.

Templar chopped down into the thrust but did not break contact. Instead he let the Sith rise while their weapons sparked and hissed between them. He slid his blade down until he could sinuously wrap his wrist around hers. Their blades were still on opposing sides but now it was risky to both to simply disengage. Purple lightning surged from Reign's free hand and it quickly stripped away his primary shield.

"I command the Force!" Darth Reign hissed haughtily, "You can not triumph!"

Templar calmly raised his sidearm faster than a blink, put it to her temple, and pulled the trigger. Gore splattered Templar's visor and was quickly cleaned by an automated cleaner. Darth Reign's lightsaber deactivated and hit the floor seconds before her body. Exhaustion hit Templar, the likes of which he hadn't felt since he became Triad. Without warning he felt himself lifted into the air with his arms rigid at his side. Thankfully his Dueling Blade had last its particle sheathe before coming into contact with his armor. Khory, her armor still smoking in several places, floated over to join Templar as he faced the young woman smiling languidly in her throne. Boomer came to his other side, uninjured, but Templar thought he was just as exhausted as the Fire Warrior.

"That was quite a spectacle. I can't believe the Paladin's reaction when you threw the rifle at him." The Sith Lord actually clapped her delight at Khory. "You even saved me the trouble of dealing with my apprentices. They thought themselves Sith Lords before they found me. I convinced them of their true status but even in my day you could never trust an apprentice too far, yes."

"Your day?" Templar asked, hoping to buy more time for one of them to figure out an escape.

The woman laughed uproariously for a moment, causing her breasts to jiggle obscenely, before composing herself somewhat.

"I came to this place over four millennia ago. You didn't think this paradise was created overnight, did you? I-" The woman grimaced and fixed Boomer with a stony glare. "That was uncalled for in the middle of a civilized discussion. You _are_ strong in the Force though. Very strong to overcome Darth Van. He would have been a mighty Sith Lord if I had let him. I would take your for my apprentice but I think you would never do." Now the Sith bared her teeth in a predatory snarl not unlike a Paladin's. "You might overcome my grip eventually but-"

This time the Sith Lord was interrupted by a resounding chime that made the throne quiver. She stood with regal grace and watched as the throne split to reveal a rounded anti-gravity pad.

"Well, I guess this cuts short our discussion. I can't risk you following though."

The unnamed Sith Lord removed a lightsaber from her belt and activated it with a snap-hiss. It was a mesmerizing shade of violet that almost burned the eyes. She moved forward, still with that regal bearing, and Templar was ready. He had done his best and he was content.

"It's been fun guys," Boomer said, as calmly as Templar felt.

"An honor."

"I'll miss you," Templar almost swallowed his tongue at Khory's announcement.

Then the Sith Lord stopped in front of Boomer, raised her lightsaber, and swept it through Templar's knees. At the same instant Khory spasmed violently and went limp. There was no pain, he had triggered a massive dose of painkiller the moment she had struck, but something was wrong. His nanites were not working, he knew because there was usually a faint electrical discharge, but he also wasn't healing as he should. Normally the pain of cellular regeneration, which nothing seemed to completely numb, was not there. Templar and Khory fell to the floor while Boomer landed on his feet. Templar had fallen forward, just behind his severed legs, and watched as the woman backed away with a girlish smile.

"Now you have a choice. Choose well."

The woman turned and the upturned tips of dual serrated blades stopped just inches from her forehead. Those blades were connected to a bracer of burnished metal, which were affixed to a thick-skinned arm speckled with black markings. That arm was attached to three meters of masked Yaujta hunter. The hunter wore a metal groin-cup, shinguards, bracer, a thick backguard, but only its right pectoral was covered in a thin plate of metal. The other side of his chest was covered in the fine-wire mesh that protected his exposed skin. Barbaric icons had been carved deeply into the left pectoral muscle. To Templar's astonishment they glowed with an eerie violet light. Its long, thick strands of hair were partially gray and Templar suspected this hunter was a veteran.

The Sith Lord shook her head and gestured imperiously. In silence the Yaujta sailed backwards to the throne, flipped, and landed in a crouch atop the wall. The Hunter reached over his shoulder and drew forth a long, thick-bladed curved sword. Pulsing violet light suddenly began to emanate from the alien hunter. Boomer began dragging his two comrades back to the wall as the Yaujta sprang toward the Sith Lord with an earthshaking roar. Templar's armor had also inexplicably failed and he was growing dizzy from blood loss but it looked as though the Yaujta's mask was very plain. That seemed wrong to him. Boomer leaned Templar and Khory against a wall well away from the fierce combatants before kneeling in front of them.

"Watch my back?"

"Always," they answered weakly.

Boomer nodded, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes.

Meanwhile the Sith Lord had tried throwing that strange lightning at the Hunter but each attempt was absorbed by his corona of light. He had closed with the Sith Lord and the two began a deadly dance back and firth across the room. The Yaujta moved with speed and grace that Templar would have been pressed to match. The Hunter never wasted motion, intent on his prey, and fought with wrist-blades as well as sword. The Sith Lord jumped, spun, feinted and attacked far more ferociously than Darth Reign.

The Sith Lord waved her hand and a piece of throne darted toward the Yaujta. He dodged it easily only to go flying over the throne-wall at another gesture. The Sith Lord took the wall in one leap and then all Templar could see were flashes of light. There was also the occasional stand of electronic equipment flying to collide with crushing force against the ceiling. Templar was growing sleepy when the pain of regeneration hit him like a speeding gunship. Something large shattered a huge cut in the throne-wall before landing four meters in front of him.

The Hunter's mask was gone and phosphorescent green blood leaked from both eyes. Several, large cauterized cuts were testament to him not coming away from his battle unscathed. The sight of the Sith Lord was even worse but now she was infinitely more terrifying. One of her eyes was gone from two furrows that had been dug down her face and a gaping wound oozed black ichor onto the ground. A crackling, malevolent corona of black lightning, twice as brilliant as the Yaujta's had been, surrounded her as she circled to stand over the stunned Hunter's head.

"Mighty hunters," she said with contempt as she raised her lightsaber with a twirl for the deathblow.

Templar threw his blade with all his might, hoping with all his heart that his blow would strike true, but he knew the effort was futile. The Sith Lord turned, batted the blade away with a snarl, and the Hunter was on his feet the instant she did. The Sith Lord jerked once, her lightsaber tumbling from a twitching hand, and two blade-tips emerged shining from her lower abdomen. She screamed, purplish lightning crackling from her fingertips, as the Yaujta roared and lifted her up off her feet. With a horrible rending round the wrist-blades tore their way towards the woman's skull. There were moments where the path proved difficult but never did their momentum stop. A click of the blades coming on the jawbones and then the head came free trailing a bloody spinal column. If anything the lightning grew worse until the body was hovering before the surprised eyes of the Yaujta.

To Templar's dazed shock three ghostly figures in long robes appeared around the body. Each held out their arms and the lightning began to dissipate harmlessly. Once the body had settled to the ground the blue-white ghosts faded away.

"Thank you Shas'O Terra Ly'tal," the voice from before said in faint tones.

The Hunter disappeared behind the throne-wall and returned seconds later still clutching the gap-jawed head of the Sith Lord. Boomer sprang to his feet before the triumphant warrior came within three meters. A faint corona of pure white light now surrounded the human. One of the Hunter's upper mandibles twitched slightly. Slowly it took something from its waist and tossed it at Templar. The Fire Warrior lazily caught it and studied what looked like the tooth of some huge carnivore. The Hunter cocked its head toward the throne.

"Boom."

Its voice was like quiet thunder. Without another word the Hunter turned, retrieved both his sword and the lightsaber of the defeated Sith Lord, and disappeared into the darkness. Khory sprang to life then and her posture was bristling anger.

"I'm sorry, guys."

Boomer hugged Khory close with one arm. The gesture should have seemed odd since she was nearly a meter taller in armor but it wasn't.

"Let's get out of here," Templar said, "I need to stretch my nubs."

It was an odd time to laugh, but laugh the Triad did.


	17. Fight For Freedom

First Lieutenant Ui'Tyinus leaned back in his chair in Third Flight's ready room and watched the slowly-spinning Halo on a wall-to-wall hologram. The hologram hovered several meters above the head of podium from which the Flight Commander usually gave his briefings. Nearly the entire Flight was there, already in their flight suits, and the only exceptions were the relatively few casualties they had sustained in the fight for the Covenant-held Halo. Ui'Oros sat next to him, her long body comfortable in the plush seats, and gazed down at the floor of the amphitheatre-type ready room. Ui'Nail sat on Tyinus' other side and had his usual grim air as he stared up at the hologram.

Arrayed around the Halo, in miniature of course, were the First and Second Carrier Groups. Several other shapes, their circumference the length of an ISN Carrier, were the first in a series of prototype Battle-Stations. Only a third of them were complete while the rest had been rushed into service with only their primary weapon systems operational. For the hundredth time since the specifications for the Battle-Station was complete, Tyinus punched them up on his armrest. Each Battle-Station was a massive installation, easily capable of housing an entire Carrier's worth of Reapers, Barracudas and Krakens, and had a megaton rail-cannon for its primary weapon. The accelerator tower was a monstrous affair half the size of a Destroyer. Rounding out the Battle-Stations armament were a quartet of RF Rail-Guns, several CSC particle cannons, over a hundred anti-fighter batteries, and dozens of torpedo/rocket/missile launchers. The several kilometer-wide EnShields the stations projected; combined with conventional shielding, gave each Battle-Station the ability to take tremendous amounts of damage.

Tyinus had been fantasizing for days about what it would be like to command that much power.

"Incoming Transit-Wave," the shipboard A.I. in command of communications broadcast over the ship, "Five… four… three… two… one…"

The holo-image magnified on the center of the Halo and the characteristic burst of light filled the interior. Dozens of ships, some of them dwarfing even the Battle-Stations in size, came flooding out of the eye of the device.

"Incoming enemy vessels. Transit-Wave in five… four…" the A.I.'s voice was nearly drowned out by the alert klaxons that began the moment she started speaking.

"You heard her!" Flight Commandar El'Friar shouted, though her voice was broadcast over the PA system in the room. "Double-time to the flight decks!"

Tyinus stood with his squadron and in a nearly coordinated wave the entire Flight poured up the amphitheatres ramps to one of four wide entrances. Tenth squadron ended up somewhere in the midst, their group still all together, as the Flight emerged into a wide corridor that curved gently to around the exterior of the ready room. Marine Security was already running everywhere, all of them entirely composed of Fire Warriors and Machines, to ensure that all the vital areas of the ship were secure in case of enemy boarding parties. Third Flight was like a crimson wave that pushed all else aside as they made their way left towards the emergency lifts to the flight decks. The shining silver walls passed in a blur as the lithe pilots made their way through _The Rhine_. Soon the lifts were in view and the first Wing was in. These lift were rapid transport, an entire five meter long section of wall had opened up, and there was just enough room for an entire Wing of kor pilots. Within twenty seconds Tyinus' Wing was stuffed inside the confines of the lift. The walls were smooth, as everything about Tau/Machine architecture tended to be, and the ambience would have been quite comfortable if one could forget that in moments they would all be fighting for their lives.

When the lift door slid down a hectic world was revealed to Tyinus. Third Flight's flight deck was a very wide affair in order for nearly the entire Flight to make an emergency landing at once if the need arose. But when over one hundred and fifty Reapers needed to take off in a hurry things got crowded fast. Thankfully the deck crew and the pilots had been working together for nearly a Terran standard year so there were few mishaps. The hangar was perfectly ovular, with the long edge operating as exterior access, and all of the Reapers rested at the rear of the hangar in their appointed launch slots. The emergency lift doors had let them out to the relative left of their fighters.

Nail calmly led his pilots towards their Reapers, deftly avoiding zipping Machine service bots and screaming fio's, and peeled off once he came to his Reaper. Tyinus went directly to his and began running a hand along its fuselage as he walked the perimeter. It was a ritual the entire Tenth had picked up from Nail. Tyinus ran his hand along the lower prong of his Reaper with a grim smile. Half a dozen rough textured rings had been imprinted upon the port lower prong to signify his kill count. Black stood for fighter, red for bombers, and gold for capital ships. None of Alpha Wing had a gold ring yet but Tyinus had a feeling that today would change that.

"How are you, Lobo?" Tyinus asked aloud.

"Cranky," his A.I. partner answered through projectors on the Reaper, "I was re-enacting a historical film called _The Princess Bride_ with a charming Defensive Weapons A.I. I think I need to destroy something."

Tyinus laughed, "I think you'll get your chance, Lobo."

Tyinus sat back in the combat seat that had extended from the bottom of his Reaper's fuselage. A fio'ui, looking understandably overworked, came over with a portable maintenance terminal. Lobo could theoretically take care of nearly all of the flight prep but protocol dictated at least one fio monitor. Two halves of a helmet extended from the headrest and closed themselves upon his head when he leaned back. Tyinus himself swung the breath mask up and latched it to the bottom of the helmet. Then the armored bottom section of the combat helmet was attached to that to completely seal Tyinus' flight suit. Tyinus barely twitched as the interface jack plunged into the interface at the base of his neck. It still caused him more than a bit of embarrassment at how he had screamed the first time. Cold gel filled his crimson flight suit from head to toe as the combat seat began to rise towards the Reaper. Soon he was enclosed in absolute darkness.

Before he could voice an objection the blast-shield on his forward viewport retracted. Dim light began to saturate his cockpit as his control board lit up.

_Ready for a system check?_ Lobo's voice was in his head now via Tyinus' interface.

_Yes_.

It took less than ten seconds for them to go over the pre-flight checklist and less than five for Lobo to confirm it with their fio handler. Tyinus' Reaper came to life with a heavy thrum.

"You're okay for launch, Ten-Seven. Good hunting, For the Greater Good!" the fio exclaimed over a private comm. channel.

"For the Greater Good," Tyinus intoned as his fighter began to slip beneath the surface of the deck.

Soon his Reaper was in its launch tube beneath the deck. The Flight and Wing Commanders had already departed and were awaiting their subordinates outside the ship. At this point all Tyinus had to do was so back and enjoy the ride. He opened up a channel to Oros with a thought.

"Oros, how about we grab a drink at the lounge after? A Fire Warrior 'Ui wants to show me a game he learned from a human. Darts or something. How about it?"

"Sure, Ty."

"_Launch in… five… four… three… two…"_

Tyinus focused his eyes forward down the long, tubular tunnel and saw the launch doors iris open. Then there was a jolt of acceleration, felt even through the inertial dampeners, and the red-streaked darkness of the launch tube was passing in a blur. In the space of a blink Tyinus' Reaper was free and Lobo was taking them towards their waypoint where the unit commanders were waiting. Having the A.I.'s do the piloting was a way of decreasing mishaps in the crowded space that was the eye of an ISN Carrier. The entire Armada of Reapers, a little over three hundred ships, was boiling forth from the eye and at the speeds they were traveling the space got crowded very fast. Once the Reapers got into their holding patterns around the Carrier then the Krakens and Barracuda's would make their appearance.

Lobo inserted their Reapers into the Tenth's delta formation four hundred meters off the starboard hull, well within the inner edge of the EnShields, and waited for their orders.

"Patch us in to _The Rhine_'s sensors. I want to see what's going on."

Lobo did so with such quickness that Tyinus suspected the A.I. had already been monitoring the situation. Tyinus stared with mixed horror and awe as he saw the Hegemony force arrayed against them. A massive ship, its blue-purple hull stark against the backdrop of the Halo, centered the Hegemony line. Dozens of strange ships, resembling rocky ocean-dwelling organisms Tyinus had read about long ago, bristled menacingly despite the fact that there were no obvious weapon emplacements on them. Oros opened up a comm. line to him.

"What kinds of ships are those?"

"From what we know of the Hegemony and their allied races those vessels are most likely Yhuzzan Vong," Lobo inserted himself into their conversation seamlessly.

"What about Big Purple?" Oros asked.

"Structurally it bears a resemblance to several different naval technologies. Its specifications match no known Hegemony vessel in my files."

"So, something new," Oros mused.

"Let's just hope it's a pushover," Oros' A.I., Luna, added in a soft voice.

As if to answer her question the primary rail-cannons of all nine Battle-Stations fired simultaneously. A dozen of the Vong vessels broke apart as if a divine wind had swept through the center of the Halo. Tyinus' jaw dropped as the unknown ship took a pair of megaton shells with negligible damage to its hull. Then the entire Hegemony Fleet scattered in all directions to escape the kill zone.

"Are those dropships?" Tyinus asked, his eyes glued to the holographic display before him.

"Affirmative. Over two hundred to be precise," Lobo answered.

Big Purple took a path that put it squarely between the firing arcs of three Battle-Stations. Before the rail-cannons could fire, hellish plumes of plasma energy erupted from emplacements around the enemy ship. The massive plasma projections, easily the size of a small asteroid, streaked toward each Battle-Station. There was no follow-up of missiles or torpedo's though. Tyinus imagined that those blasts were more than capable of stripping away conventional shields but they had never come up against the infuriatingly efficiency of a capital-class EnShield. Each plasma projection, there seemed to be three for each Battle-Station, visibly shrank as they hurtled through the EnShields. To the pilot's horror two of plasma projections still retained at least fifty percent of their volume as they made it past the inner edge. Only one of the stations was fully operational while the other two still had another layer of reinforced hull to be added. Tyinus' growled softly as one Battle-Station began venting atmosphere from two tremendous fissures in its superior hull while the other's rail-cannon upper two-thirds totally detached from the station. The third Battle-Station had several, very wide, slagged portions of hull but seemed to be intact.

The Battle-Station's commander was reasonably upset at the outcome.

A cacophony of light burst forth from the Battle-Station, started by the main cannon's blast, and engulfed Big Purple. The Hegemony vessel returned fire with a varied assortment of directed energy weapons that barely penetrated the Station's Enshields. Then the Hegemony vessel put on a sudden burst of astounding acceleration that pushed it beyond the firing arc of the majority of the Station's weaponry.

It was coming straight for them.

"Pilots," Nail broadcast over the general squad channel. "We are deploying in a wide defensive screen around the Group. Alpha Wing is forming up with a bomber squad out of the _Path Of Yui_. Transmitting deployment coordinates."

Tyinus' guided his Reaper through the one of the relatively tiny pathways in the Carrier's EnShield and followed Oros as she made her way to the designated coordinates. To Tyinus' surprise they were once again escorting _Philly Pride_ into battle.

"This is Wing Commander," El'Kuih's voice fairly quivered with pride, "The _Pride_ requested our wing as escort. Let's not disappoint them."

The _Rhine_ and the four Cruisers of the Group opened fire with their RF Rail-Guns. Tyinus shook his head as the enemy vessel continued its nearly suicidal charge. Some of the multi-ton rail-shells were making it through the barrage and the effect was showing. Then the _Rhine_ threw up a screen of blinder torpedoes and the enemy vessel returned fire with its absurdly powerful plasma cannons. The _Pride_ put on a burst of acceleration, and so did its sister ships, that put it inside the maximum turning arc of the plasma projections. Space was suddenly brightened by the blinder torpedoes and then again from a source somewhere behind Tyinus.

"We've lost the _Yui_," Lobo said, quietly.

Tyinus cursed foully in his native tongue as the Destroyers came within firing range of Big Purple. The _Pride's_ escorts scattered as the Destroyers opened up with every forward facing energy weapon they had. Relatively wide swathes of the Hegemony vessel's hull began to slough off under the energy bombardment. Big Purple returned fire but it was primarily directed energy weapons that would have obliterated a baseline Tau craft. These were ISN Destroyers that protected by EnShields, normal shields and possessed the heaviest armor of any ISN ship. Tyinus assumed they were within the firing range of the forward facing plasma projections that had killed two Battle-Stations and an ISN Cruiser when missiles began to fly from the Hegemony vessel to only be shot down by the plasma batteries lining the sides of each Destroyer. That was when all five ISN Destroyers presented their bellies to the Hegemony vessel.

The detonations of the kiloton shells against shield and armor were utterly captivating.

Big Purple came out the other side of the gauntlet with the nearly thirty meters of its port wing gone and atmosphere venting from several places. Impossible as it was, the ship pulled "upward" and rotated in a classic aerospace maneuver that had translated well into interplanetary warfare, as it released a swarm of fast-attack vessels nearly as numerous as an Armada of Reapers.

"Get hot!" El'Kuih spat as the fighters and bombers began zeroing in on the Reapers for an attack run.

Tyinus merged with his ship in the literal blink of an eye. The fighters were Interceptors, even more advanced than the ones he had fought previously, and the bombers gave off some of the same energy emissions as the one that had nearly ended.

"For the Greater Good!" Fio'O Kin bellowed Armada-wide and was answered in kind by a bellow that would have deafened anyone listening without a neural link.

The squadron of Krakens fired a salvo of torpedoes and missiles at the Hegemony ships that was answered in kind. Energy detonations, some of them akin to thermonuclear detonation, washed space in light and heat. Tyinus', his teeth gritted tightly, blasted through the energy wall before it had fully faded. Before he could form one coherent thought his particle repeaters were firing ceaselessly. Oros was right behind him and fired a rocket directly at his tail. Tyinus dodged to port at the last second and the Interceptor before him disappeared in a cloud of debris and particle energy. An Interceptor zipped barely ten meters from his nose and Tyinus rolled his ship right behind it. Earlier lessons had taught Tyinus well the value of striking hard and fast. All four of his particle repeaters fired continuous streams at the Interceptors tail. They converged on a spot one meter and diameter and drilled a perfect circle right through the vessel. Atmosphere vented and the Interceptor tumbled out of control but Tyinus was already moving on to the next target.

It was Hegemony trash on Oros tail.

Approximately two minutes later Tyinus and Oros' Reapers had successfully killed the last bomber in their designated combat zone. Again, through blink luck or skill Tyinus couldn't decide, the entire 10th had come through. Several Reapers were in bad shape and their pilots not much worse. They had nearly lost the Destroyer, _Kais' Victory_, but the other Destroyers had come through intact. Right now Big Purple was floating only a few thousand kilometers from the center of the Halo ring. It was still relatively intact, despite the fact that it was venting atmosphere from every conceivable surface, and one of its wings was almost totally gone. PathFinder Gunships were circling it like scavengers around a freshly killed carcass but that was not Tyinus' concern now.

"So, Oros, about that drink…"

* * *

Her siblings had long ago taken to calling her The First, but the second T-X Prototype had chosen a real name.

Lillian.

The Terminator liked the way it rolled off the tongue and it had been relatively easy to get the Tau to refer to her as such. The humans, as they seemed to be about most things dealing with their Machine allies, proved a more difficult challenge.

_No time to dwell now._

Lillian was a Fleet Admiral in the Trinity Interstellar Navy and she had chosen a Destroyer for her command ship. The _Honor of Tyr_ had been the first out of The Belt shipyards and had been instrumental in taking the Covenant-held Halo. Its bridge's design was straightforward and had the dazzling metallic hue of SkyNet construction. There were two levels with multiple entry points. The upper level was officer country, as a Marine security grunt had dubbed it, and the semi-circular deck was dominated by a circular conference table. Facing towards the edge of the level was a raised dais upon which sat the Admiral's command chair. To either side of Lillian sat the Captain and her Executive Officer in their own command chairs. The lower level was filled with control stations manned entirely by air caste Tau. Their long, fragile-looking bodies sat nearly immobile in their combat couches. Each stared at whatever their neural interface was showing them and occasionally tapping commands into their control board to coincide with mental commands. All ISN personnel wore skintight, dark gray jumpsuits, with brilliant patches of color against a left shoulderpad that was the same hue as the walls. Lillian had stopped shaping her clothes so provocatively when she had become an Admiral but sometimes the uniform felt almost as revealing. The humans, very few still, which had joined the ISN, had added a long loincloth garment to protect their modesty somewhat. Anyone listening would have thought the bridge a silent place but that was not so. All it took was the right interface and the excitement the entire crew was feeling would pulse in an organic's skull.

In ten seconds the final stages of Operation: Deliverance would begin.

A huge, spherical hologram that filled the upper half of the bridge was displaying the Halo and a little more than two hundred thousand kilometers of the space around it. Lillian ignored it, as did the rest of her crew, as it was intended for those organics without invasive neural interfaces. Thankfully there were none present asking her useless questions. The Fleet Admiral was directly tied in to her ship's sensors and she could tell what was happening as though she were watching it.

"Inform the _Saint Louis_ that they do not have an optimal firing position."

"Yes, O'Lillian," her primary communications officer replied through their shipwide Battle-Net. Lillian broadcast to all her Captain's on a private channel. "Four seconds, Captains. Remember that they said the Tau as a people were finished. Remember that you fight for a new home. That you fight for a free people. For the Greater Good!"

"For The Greater Good!"

Then an awe-inspiring pillar of light shot from the surface of the Halo and expanded in its center. When it dispersed there was a fleet of one hundred and fifteen vessels of varying sizes and design. Most of them were of Hegemony design but no one fired because twenty-three new T-X signals suddenly broadcast over the Battle-Net.

"Silence!" Lillian roared over the 'Net as she assimilated the data her sisters were feeding her. "_Louis, Maiden, _and _Zulu_, form on me. Unit-Seven-Three-Four, move your fleet to the designated coordinates. The rest of you hold position until the last of us Transit-In."

There was a chorus of affirmatives as the Admiral relayed coordinates to the Transit Control Center. Three sister Destroyers formed a line around the _Tyr_. Soon the three shining needles were stationary in the relative center of the ring. Light and resonant sound distorted the world for an instant and then was gone. Now the Fleet Admiral faced a naval officer's worst nightmare. There were two hundred and seventy-nine Hegemony vessels fighting in the immediate vicinity of this Halo. A fair portion of those hovered in close proximity to the Forerunner construct as they waited their turn to Transit-Out. These fifty-odd ships were unarmed transports of varying design. The ferocity of the combat made telling friend from foe tricky but Lillian had the tools for the job.

"Isolate ship by Tau life signatures. Open the 'Net."

At the same time that the science officers tagged the vessel by Tau life signatures, the communications officers opened up a limited, local Battle-Net. Twenty-five T-X signatures began broadcasting immediately and Lillian was quick to react.

"Separate and engage. Refugee Fleet elements will attach themselves to you. For The Greater Good!"

"For The Greater Good!" came the reply as the Destroyers raced into the maelstrom.

All along the broad front the Refugee's had established, their ships began bowing back so that three shallow bowls began to form. There were only thirty Hegemony vessels facing the Refugees but their models were newer and their systems updated. Several Refugee vessels had already been so heavily damaged that they were slowly listing away from the battle. Out of the center of each bowl came a Trinity Destroyer bent on unleashing hell. The bowls quickly folded into the sides and then followed the path of their chosen Destroyer. The result was three formations that resembled arrows complete with fletching.

Boiling spheres of energy were dispersed by forward EnShields as the ISN Destroyers closed with their enemy. Then missiles and torpedoes made of hysperalloys and ceramics were deployed. A defensive screen of fighters was also focused on the Destroyers. The ballistic weapons were slowed down measurably by the EnShields and were easily destroyed by anti-ballistic plasma batteries. A nanosecond after the last missile was destroyed each Destroyer's Void-Shield dropped. The display of light was bright enough to see as though a miniature star had been born. Only a fraction of the fighters survived the initial burst and they quickly scrambled out of the path of the charging Destroyers. Each Destroyer was responsible for obliterating several smaller Hegemony vessels before they plunged into the midst of their section of the enemy fleet. Thus the Destroyers began their spinning dance of death as their mega-ton Rail-Cannons spat vengeance at the oppressors of the Tau and humanity.

Within two minutes the combined efforts of the ISN Destroyers and the Refugee Fleet had wiped out the Hegemony presence. Several more Refugee ships had been rendered inoperable.

"Send a message to our Fleet. Hold position but I want the _Blade of Gel'faun_ to Transit-In prepped for search-and-rescue." Lillian opened up to the 'Net. "All Refugee ships are ordered to Transit to your Home Galaxy at once. Welcome to the Trinty of Light."

* * *

_Author's Notes: I decided to enlarge this section in order to give a glimpse of what exactly a Trinity ISN Battle-Station is. I was thinking of making an addy to further illustrate one of the roles of a Pathfinder in the Trinity Marine Corps. If anybody wants to see that just dro me a PM because if not I should get back to writing my other fic. Thanks for reading._


	18. Haven

_Author's Notes_: _I added a bit to the space battles of chapter 17 so, if you so choose, go back and re-read it to see just what kind of damage an ISN Battle-Station can do._

* * *

General John Conner stood, hands clasped behind his back, and gazed out of an enormous transparisteel window. Sometimes, especially at times like these, he felt as though the last year was a dream. The quickly growing city below him certainly seemed something out of a dream. There were no military transports tearing through the sky, no war machines' grinding treads atop the rubble of human civilization, and no stomp of infantry marching their way to battle. No, Haven almost entirely belonged to the civilian population, except for a tiny island at the city's center.

Haven was an entirely new city that was being built on land in what had once been Mexico that had been untouched by heavy fallout. The human portion of the city was composed of wide, communal compounds that rarely reached three stories in height. There were also extensive tunnel and bunker systems beneath that part of the city. The Tau section, still not heavily populated, was generally higher than but still as communal as the humans. All of the Tau and human structures were a brilliant shade of white and made of subtly curved alloys. The tiny Machine portion of the city, for those Machines supposedly devoted to improving and developing their burgeoning culture, was only different in that everything was dressed in that signature metallic silver. Haven covered nearly five kilometers in every direction and it was still growing.

At the center of the city there stood a slender spire that was not really that slender. It was only rendered that way by the blocky skyscrapers around it. This spire was a prototype Planetary Rail-Cannon and the skyscrapers around it housed the city's garrison as well as supplies and equipment in case of siege. Conner was in one of those blocky buildings now.

"So Deliverance was a total success?" Conner asked as he turned to face his peers.

SkyNet's disgustingly handsome hologram sat in an equally holographic chair in front of a small table. Aun'O Gras'ur sat on the opposite side and sipped a mug containing a bitter Tau drink.

"I would not call the loss of fifty of my… T-X units as a total success," SkyNet answered drolly, "But the operation has exceeded our goals. Our best estimates have a combined total of over two hundred million individuals that have come with the Refugee Fleets. Approximately seventy million of which are human and a small percentage of alien species."

"What are we going to do with them?" Conner asked, raising an eyebrow, and the Tau Ethereal answered.

"The majority have no home to return to. We wish to offer them asylum. Some, most notably a Jedi Master and her apprentice, will want to return to their home galaxy. Of course we will provide transport for them when they wish."

Conner nodded, "What's the ETA on the Fleets arriving?"

"The first should arrive in approximately two days depending on how damaged their ships are," SkyNet answered.

"Any pursuers?"

"Yes, some Transited-In behind the Fleets but the Battle-Stations took care of them. Some enemy Fleets stopped our Refugees from Transiting but ISN fleets reinforced them and eliminated any Hegemony opposition."

"Good," Conner said with more than a little relief.

"Tell me, General," O'Gras'ur spoke softly, "How are the Machine-Human clones?"

Conner absently traced the scar on his face, "We have achieved an almost perfect success rate in removing the implants used to control them. Unfortunately, the clones that were nearly operational were also partially lobotomized. SkyNet believes that in time we can replace those portions with cybernetics."

"What are we to do with them once we release them?"

"They have been pre-conditioned for combat and will go through intensive training before assignment to a military branch."

"But would that not be the same as what the Stone's planned?"

Conner grimaced, "They, like any individual in the armed forces, will have the same choice. They always have the option of quitting and pursuing the life of a civilian."

The Aun nodded once and let that matter drop.

"What are your thoughts on the Sentient Coalition, General Conner?"

"They fight for the same thing we do and if their methods are extreme well… you know how the old saying goes." Conner looked at the Tau's puzzled face and grinned sheepishly. "Sorry, I forgot you were an alien for a second."

"Desperate times call for desperate measures," SkyNet interjected helpfully, "May I ask why this sudden interest in the Coalition, Aun?"

"There may come a time when there is a choice between war with the Coalition and letting them try our military for war crimes, as well as forced relocation of the civilian population to isolated worlds. We have foreseen it but not your actions."

"Without the Tau this would not be possible," SkyNet said solemnly, "And I would not exist. The Machines stand with the Tau."

Conner peered at the Aun for a moment before sighing, "You helped us survive. You fought for promises and dreams. Your people died for them, never knowing if they were going to be betrayed. You have us our freedom." Conner held out his hand to the Aun. "If it comes to that I will do everything in my power to fight for you as you fought for us. For freedom, for life."

"For The Greater Good," the Aun said, rising from his seat.

"For The Greater Good."

The Aun reached and clasped the Terran's hand.

* * *

_End Notes: I'd like to thank BombSquad for providing the unique setting for this work of fanfiction. I'd also like to thank all my readers for your support, spoken and unspoken, because without you feeding my need for praise I might never have finished. I kid, loyal readers, I kid. In all seriousness I'd like to give special thanks to Alice_ _the Raven for her technical insight and X-Over for his help with retouching rough bits of the tale. I do not know if there will be more tales of the Trinity of Light but you know how the old saying goes. Only fools count their gold earnings before they get to town. Or something to that effect. Later._


End file.
